access to parks, and walking space

2020/04/20 Dan Allison1 Comment

I have long been interested in access to parks, what the availability of parks is to people, and wanted to map this. It is just today that I was finally able to start doing this. I acknowledge the support of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) GIS staff, without which I could not have done this, as my ArcGIS skills are limited, though growing, and my access to the needed data is also limited.

This issue of access to parks, always important, is suddenly critical under the pandemic, with people needing places to walk where they can achieve physical activity with appropriate physical distancing. With many neighborhoods in Sacramento not having sidewalks, or having narrow sidewalks (six feet at best, often five feet, sometimes four feet or three feet; yes, three feet!), and some of those who are still driving doing so very recklessly, sidewalks in and of themselves don’t make it for large areas of Sacramento.

Advocates all over the US, and the world for that matter, have asked that cities and counties open up streets for walking and bicycling, sometimes by prohibiting drivers and their motor vehicles, sometime allowing only local access. In the US, Oakland has become the leader in this (Oakland Slow Streets), though many other cities have implemented programs as well. The City of Sacramento is also considering this, with staff working on a proposal, though it is not known yet what it will look like, or if it will be adopted. A number of people have made suggestions for streets to ‘close’ (meaning open to walkers and bicyclists), but the nature of advocacy is that many of these suggestions have been for areas that have sidewalks, and that have parks, because these are the areas where many advocates live. I’m not saying they are wrong, but I want to do my part to see that open streets occur in the areas that most need them, which is almost always the low-income, disinvested areas of north Sacramento/Del Paso Heights and south Sacramento.

So, I picked two zip codes to map. One is 95814, the central city downtown, and the other is 95824, an area of south Sacramento (which includes both City of Sacramento and unincorporated Sacramento County).

The maps shows the park locations (from the SACOG Regional Parks & Open Spaces 2018 data), and the 10-minute walking area around these parks. The reason I picked 10 minutes is the initiative by the National Parks and Recreation Association (NPRA) and partners: “We’re inspiring and enabling action to create a world in which 100% of people in U.S. cities—LARGE AND SMALL—have safe access to a quality park or green space within a 10-minute walk of home by 2050.” I’ve also included the Median Household Income for census tracts (ACS Median Household Income S1903 2013-2017). On the 95824 map, you can see that the entire zip code is less than 80% of California MHI ($67,169), a disadvantaged community. On the 95814 map, the 10-minute walking area covers up the MHI, but nearly the entire area is also below 80%.

Please note that there are many ways of mapping park access. In this case, I used park centroids (the geographic center of the park), which makes sense for smaller parks, but doesn’t work as well for large parks, and parks which are contiguous but named differently. There are also many ways of looking at disadvantaged community status, and at demographic characteristics. I chose ones that I had worked with before, and other criteria would yield different results. I’ve used zip codes here, though I think that if the cities and county actually analyze the data for need, census tracts are the better polygon size. Census tracts are less familiar to people than zip codes, but census tracts often more accurately represent what people think of as their neighborhood.

So, now with the maps. The first is 95814, downtown Sacramento, and the second 95824, south Sacramento. Clicking on the graphic map will bring up the option to download a pdf.

As you can see, the entire 95814 zip code has access to a park within a 10-minute walk. The 95824 zip code, however, only about half the area has access. Very different places! Therefore, I would recommend that the 95824 zip code, for example, needs open streets, now, and the 95814 zip code does not.

I welcome your feedback on these maps. What would you like to see? What data should I be considering? Do you see issues of access and space for social distancing in this way, or another way? What areas do you want to know about?

We can’t go back

2020/04/17 Dan Allison1 Comment

sorry, could not find a photo for Sacramento,, but if someone provides it, I will replace this one of Los Angeles (via Business Insider)

We can’t go back to the way things were before! To the car-dominated world where walkers and bicyclists were considered second-class citizens, worthy of consideration only when it did not inconvenience the privileged drivers of cars. The streets are largely empty (except for some essential drivers and too many joy-riders). The air is clean. The city is quiet. It is (other than the above-mentioned joy riders) safe to cross the street, to bicycle on the street, even in some places, to walk in the street. I don’t intend to ever go back, and will work to make sure we do not go back.

Here is a list, with brief notes, of areas in which I think we should not and cannot go back. No priority order. I think that over time my ideas can be refined and added to. Let me acknowledge the many people on Twitter, my main social platform, for giving me a lot of good ideas and food for thought.

Right to Move: I believe that, as humans, we have a right to move, to freedom of movement (though I also believe that reduction or even suspension of this right for public health during a pandemic is acceptable, though traumatic). However, this right is expressed through walking (or mobility devices for those not able to walk). It is not expressed through bicycles, or scooters, or even transit, and it is absolutely not expressed through privately owned vehicles. I am not saying that bicycles and scooters and transit are not good methods of movement for transportation, but walking must always be the most important and the most guaranteed, our most basic right, with other modes coming later, if at all (in the case of cars). I am tired of myself and others being terrorized by private vehicle drivers, who are all too happy to inflict their traffic violence on innocent people. Walking FIRST!
Transportation
- all pedestrian signals should be set on recall; they should be labeled with their function; and if there a locations where traffic engineers claim such a low rate of pedestrian use, I’d ask for an analysis of why is there no pedestrian use; if it is an urbanized area, why aren’t there pedestrians, and if it is a rural area, why is there a signal?
- failure to yield to pedestrians (CA CVC 21950) should be considered a sociopathic offense, similar to drunk driving and smoking in buildings, and strictly enforced; I am not just concerned about the number of pedestrians who are killed and severely injured by drivers, but about all the people who could walk, but don’t, because they are rightfully afraid of car drivers; drivers who repeatedly violate this should have their driving privileges revoked (drivers license suspended and vehicle impounded), and those who still violate should be jailed
- #NoNewLaneMiles (a more specific version of #NoNewRoads); we have all the roads we will ever need, we just need to use them more efficiently by increasing the density of homes, jobs, and services; because there are no new roads, there will be no greenfield developments, as we have plenty of infill/redevelopment land to work with, and we have an excess of single family homes
- expenditures on roadways will only go to maintenance, and once a level of good repair is achieved, then to true complete streets projects which reallocate roadway space and increase safe crossings
- all roadways that are more than two lanes per direction must be reduced to no more than two lanes. Drivers have proven themselves, again and again, incapable of responsibly using wide roadways, and so these wide roadways must end. Temporarily, we can put up barricades or delineators to reduce the lanes, and in the long run, determine and then implement ways of re-allocating this space to best serve the community; some land might be available for housing development
- freeways will be designed and sized for freight movement, not for commuting; interstate commerce is the primary legally and morally justifiable use for our Interstate system; the idea of continuously expanding freeways so that a continuously expanding number of people can choose to commute continuously expanding distances is not socially or economically rational or feasible; where there are more than two lanes on a freeway, one or more of them should be designated (and enforced) as a freight-only lane so that freight is not slowed by commuting traffic
- private and commercial fossil-fueled vehicles must be strictly controlled on all spare-the-air days; if the air quality particulates (winter) or ozone (summer) exceeds the ‘healthy’ level, then we start shutting down vehicles; this would be much easier to do if we implemented a pricing scheme (congestion management) all the time, but if we are still working on that, we can in the meanwhile reduce traffic; I’m thinking the easiest way to do that is to control on-ramps and off-ramps, since most long distance commuters, and much commercial traffic, is using the freeways; some on-ramps already meter vehicles, and we could just slow this down so fewer vehicles are allowed to enter; we would have to add off-ramp metering; there are a lot of ways of managing traffic, some of the best controlling the amount of underpriced or free parking, but this is definitely one to explore
- vehicles must be speed limited, so that drivers cannot exceed safe speed limits; this is one of the easiest to accomplish because all modern vehicles could be speed limited with minor software modification, but I realize that it is politically the least feasible; nevertheless, we need to be talking about it and advocating for it
Work from home: I fully understand that not every job is amenable to working from home, and interestingly, it turns out that almost all of the truly essential jobs are not, but nevertheless, many jobs are; employers should be required to analyze each job position to determine whether a particular job could be done from home, either all the time, or some days of the week, and then to implement work from home policies that allow the least in-person work required
Schools: I am part of the educational system. I like the idea of school choice, and I think it has a number of benefits. However, I also see the cost of it. A huge amount of driving, taking students to and from school. The idling of cars outside the school has a measurable and negative impact on air quality in the classrooms. Much of this driving is unnecessary, and trips could be done walking or bicyclist, but is driven for the convenience of the parents (not the students). The greatest danger students walking and bicycling face is the drivers taking their own child to school, and in addition to the direct danger, there is the intimidation that makes people less willing to walk and bike. Students are getting significantly less physical activity. Students and families feel less connected to the neighborhood they live in, and the school feels less connected to its neighborhood as well. So:
- for any school located on an arterial with more than two lanes of traffic in a direction, lanes will be immediately closed in order to increase the safety of students walking and bicycling, and to create a less polluted and hectic environment
- private vehicles will be prohibited on campuses, except where the parent has submitted a statement to the school detailing why a particular student must be transported directly to the school (meaning, a disability of some sort), and received a pass; schools are there to educate students, not to accommodate drivers
- for schools located on local streets, the block on which the school is located will be closed to through traffic for the duration of arrival and dismissal (or longer); of course this means that students and families using mobility devices must be guaranteed high quality sidewalks and crosswalks, with ADA ramps, at least 6 feet in width, and in good repair
- school districts should have a conversation with families and the public about the ways in which a non-neighborhood school supports and does not support academic learning and the needs of its community
Housing: Part of the reason we have a housing crisis is that single family homeowners have been able to suppress the building of homes, for some types of people (read: minorities) and for some kinds of housing (read: multi-family), for a long period of our history. We all suffer from this: un-housed people, high rents, separation of jobs and housing, climate change, air pollution, most of our transportation dollars going to long distance commuters while we have potholes in our local streets, underinvestment in transit and rail, etc. The most egregious, though largely hidden from view, aspect of this is that single family housing has bankrupted our cities, and counties, and state. Single family housing can never generate enough sales tax or property tax or user fees to pay for the maintenance required to sustain all these spread out houses and roads and utilities and law enforcement, and fire, and, and and. I think it is becoming clearer by the day how financially on edge our governments were. They have huge bond debt, huge deferred maintenance and well as current maintenance obligations, and far too much reliance on new development just to keep the old going (which is called the development ponzi scheme – see Strong Towns). Sprawl is the primary though not the only driver (pun intended) of this. So:
- immediately remove all residential zoning classifications, so that there is only one residential zone, and no limit on the types of housing that can be constructed on a piece of land; until such time as we can analyze what we need in terms of zoning and development standards, I’d leave the rest be, but this is a step we can and should take immediately
- no developments (even infill) larger than a certain size should be allowed to deed road and utility improvements to cities and counties, unless they pay a fee to a maintenance endowment sufficient to maintain that infrastructure for all time; I am not talking about development fees, which of course are used to maintain past infrastructure and to keep the doors open, but never retained for the future, rather, these are banked funds to meet the needs of the future
- recognize a right to housing for all people; this is obviously a huge undertaking, for which governments may not have the money (because of the sprawl subsidy and bankruptcy detailed above), though there is certainly a lot of shifting of resources that could get us a significant way there, but we need to start working toward that goal now, and with much of our societal focus on how to solve the issue as quickly and equitably as possible

Thank you if you stuck with this long list to the end. As I said, it is preliminary, and your constructive comments here or on Twitter are welcomed.

I admit that I thought we had a decent world, many issues to work on, but sort of OK. Probably some others felt this way. But the bottom has dropped out, for those in poor health (much of that poor health due to all the actions above that we did not take), people of color, low income people, un-housed people, people dependent on employer-provided health insurance, people in essential jobs. I am very lucky! (yes, the luck of privilege).

I hope that we reflect deeply on the clean air and streets available for people (outside cars) to live, and all join together to make sure we do not go back to the old, unenlightened times, but to work hard towards a better future.

I am quite aware that I have not mentioned, or have lightly touched on, a lot of other issues that are critical to so many people. Climate change is one of the biggies for me. Please don’t think that those other issues are unimportant to me, but transportation is my expertise and advocacy, and it needs strong voices, now and always.

the problem with maps

2020/04/072024/01/21 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

Maps have suddenly become the preferred method for presenting information, which is a good thing. But I see so many maps that don’t present what they are claiming to present, or supporting the story being told in the text. Ack!

Since coronavirus maps are the rage, I’ve selected two to show. These are from the UCSF Health Atlas, which just added COVID-19 data by county. Take a look for yourself, a fascinating website, that I was not aware of until today. The first map is of COVID-19 cases. It shows Los Angeles county as having the most, followed by San Diego county and then Santa Clara county. The second map is of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people. It shows Mono county as having the highest rate, followed by San Mateo county.

COVID-19 cases, source UCSF Health Atlas

Remarkably different maps, eh! Why?

Numbers don’t tell a story of any use to responding to the pandemic, or of any other planning effort. The important quantity is rate, and in this case the rate is per 100,000 people. The table below shows a selection of counties and their statistics. If one looked at just the numbers, Los Angeles county would look like a horrible place to be. Yet the rate is below a number of other counties in California. Los Angeles county contains over one-quarter of the people in California. In fact, Mono county is the worst place to be right now, with a rate far above any place else in the state.

County	CV number	CV rate	density	population
Los Angeles	5955	59	5076	10,098,052
San Diego	1326	40	2728	3,302,833
Santa Clara	1207	63	3186	1,922,200
San Francisco	568	66	11,413	870,044
Mono	19	135	17	14,174
Inyo	11	60	126	18,085
San Mateo	555	73	3237	765,935
Marin	141	54	2294	260,295

selected county statistics

The second major issue that number maps lie about is the importance of density. It is currently popular, especially among NIMBYs (not in my backyard), but even some in the medical profession, to claim that density is a problem, that density has fueled spread of the virus. And that once the pandemic is over, the prominence of cities will be over, that everyone will realize that the suburbs were the best and safest place all along, and go back to their long distance commutes. Bullshit! If density were the problem, San Francisco city/county would have the highest rate, but its rate is fairly average for California. And largely rural counties like Mono would have very low rates, but its rate is the highest. Before you ask, no, I don’t have similar data for New York, nor I am sure what it would show.

All of this comes with the standard disclaimer that COVID-19 cases are dependent upon testing, but testing has been widely variable in different counties. I have not seen any statistics on testing at the county level, but that is another data set that could be used to normalize cases in the similar way that population is used to normalize cases. And as the pandemic progresses and the curve declines (someday), the data may look very different. But in the meanwhile, the best we have and the best we can do for planning is to use rates.

So how does this relate to transportation, the topic of this blog? Transportation agencies, both road builders and so-called safety agencies (OTS and NHTSA) almost always report numbers and not rates, and make claims about what is important based on those numbers. They are reluctant to report rates, or anything, though if you read to the end of their reports, or search in their data tables, the rates are usually there, just not obvious. They agencies are also very reluctant to compile pedestrian counts or bicyclist counts, claiming it is too expensive, but really what they are saying is that pedestrians and bicyclists are not important enough to count. They wouldn’t like the statistics that result from data normalized by trips numbers or trip length for pedestrians and bicyclists, because such data would probably force them to select different projects and have different priorities than the ones they have.

The Health Atlas also has data on Street Connectivity, which I hope to explore since it relates so strongly with walkability and bikeability.

beg button signs

2020/04/042024/07/01 Dan Allison1 Comment

The Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), and the California equivalent, are standards for the design and placement of traffic control signs. They have the force of law for any federal or state funded roadways, but there is no enforcement mechanism, so signs that do not meet these standards can certainly be found, both in places that just decide they know better, and in places where the public right-of-way and use is evolving rapidly and the glacial pace approval of new signs is not keeping up.

The MUTCD has 14 signs related to the use of beg buttons to cross the street, in the R10-1 through R10-4 series. One of these is shown below, the most complicated one, R10-3e. Of the 14, none offer any information about whether the beg button is required or not. This is not an oversight; it is a direct expression of traffic engineer’s disdain for pedestrians. California could, of course, add other signs with better information, after approval by FHWA, but it has not seen fit to do so.

Noting the lack of good signs that actually address real-world situations, some entities have designed their own. One example is below, which came via Don Kostelec, of whom I’ll have more to say shortly. (original source not known)

Why is the distinction between these two types of signs important? Buttons can be used by limited vision or blind people to trigger the pedestrian signal, and the auditory and sometimes vibratory message that goes with it. When the conversation started about removing beg buttons, many disability advocates were up in arms, understandably. If there is no button, there is no message.

Except, of course, for automatic detection of pedestrians, and even pedestrians types, that many other countries and a very few places in the US are installing. Traffic engineers routinely resist automatic detection as “too expensive and not practical” despite spending much larger sums on vehicle detection. Which in the case of bicyclists, often doesn’t work anyway.

Traffic engineers also frequently place buttons in places where people with disabilities, as well as everyone, can’t find them and/or can’t reach them.

So, is there a way to preserve the function of buttons needed by disabled people, while not discriminating against all pedestrians? You bet. Just label the button for its function. And put it in an accessible location.

So, Don Kostelec. He is one of my heroes, as he has done a better job than anyone I know of documenting the failures of transportation agencies to install safe and usable pedestrian facilities. Sidewalks too narrow, or that end where you really need them; ADA ramps to nowhere; crosswalks that can’t be safely used; and on and on. I highly encourage you to check out his blog (http://www.kostelecplanning.com/blog/) and Twitter feed (@KostelecPlan). He does not hesitate to call out road and traffic engineers for their failure to think, and for their failure to follow their professional code of ethics. Though he didn’t originate it, I think he is responsible for popularizing the expression “Hold my beer!” in the transportation world, implying that only an engineer drinking beer, and momentarily designing a roadway or facility before going back to drinking, could have done something that stupid.

And on this topic of beg buttons, I particularly encourage you to read his recent post, Push buttons: The good, the beg, and the ugly.

There has also been a lot of discussion about whether it is hard to change the buttons from required to not required, which is called auto recall, or just recall. A number of cities have changed hundreds of buttons in very short order because they prioritized it. Newer signal control boxes allow changes to be made remotely, changing the function and timing of pedestrian signals. Older control boxes may require that someone go out and physically change them. The older boxes are sometimes derisively called squirrel cages because they had large physical clocks with rotating dial, with pegs to change the signal on or off, as it came around. They made noises like a squirrel or hamster cage. A few idiots have been saying that pedestrian signals should not be changed remotely because of security issues. That is the whole point of modern signal controllers, part of Integrated Traffic Systems (ITS), that they can be can sense and respond to actual traffic, and can be adjusted remotely to respond to changing conditions and for changing flow when crashes occur.

There is also the issue that many transportation agencies don’t know what is at the intersection. Does it have pedestrian signals or not? Does it have pedestrian countdown or not? What is the timing of the pedestrian phase, in terms of countdown? Is the beg button required or not? They simply don’t know. Locally, Sacramento County is the worst on this issue.

Previous post on beg buttons: Don’t touch that button! Then, there are locations where pedestrian crossing is simply prohibited, for reasons having everything to do with speeding traffic and nothing to do with pedestrian safety: and crossing prohibitions, and no-ped-crossing in the grid.

prudent drivers as traffic calming

2020/04/04 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

Now, on to why I brought up the topic of prudent drivers. A prudent driver on a two lane (one lane in each direction) roadway largely controls the behavior of irresponsible drivers. On wider roads, with two lanes or more in a direction, whether a one-way or two-way, the irresponsible driver can do as they wish, violating laws and endangering others. On the narrower roadway, the irresponsible drivers get irritated, and honk and cuss, but there isn’t much they can do about it. This difference in large part explains why fatality and severe injury crashes are rare on residential streets within neighborhoods, and are common on arterial streets with multiple lanes. It also explains why rural roads have such high crash rates, because the prudent driver there can’t really control other drivers. On two lane streets, prudent drivers set the tone; on multiple lane streets, irresponsible drivers set the tone.

We have proven, over the history of motor vehicle use in the US, that is is not possible to significantly change the behavior of drivers. Education doesn’t do it, enforcement (even when that used to be more common) doesn’t do it. Nearly all of the improvement in roadway deaths has been due to safer cars, not to safer drivers or safer roads, and now that improvement is reversing itself as more and more walkers and bicyclists are killed by irresponsible drivers.

I am not against education, if it is directed at the most dangerous behaviors, which it is not, and I am not against enforcement, if it is done in an unbiased manner, which it is not. Each state has an agency, usually called the Office of Traffic Safety (OTS), whose mission is to obscure the real causes of crashes and to blame walkers and bicyclist for their death and injury, and at the federal level, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) fulfills this function admirably. In this, they are often aided and abetted by the law enforcement agencies. The reason CHP is California is so opposed to automatic speed enforcement is because it would remove the mis-focus and bias that they otherwise rely upon.

Driver behavior must be controlled by roadway design. That is why I strongly believe that all multiple lane roads must be reduced. Two lane one-way streets must be converted to two-ways streets with only one lane in each direction (and any other lanes converted to pedestrian, bicyclist or transit use). Two-way roadways with two or more lanes in the same direction must be reallocated to other uses. Again, excess capacity would be converted to pedestrian, bicyclist, or transit use, or even to development as overly wide streets shrink to fit the real need.

I have no illusions about the huge change in traffic flow. Those drivers who have gotten used to having plenty of space for themselves (their cars) would have to figure out how to use less: fewer trips, shorter trips, slower trips. People would make different decisions about where they live, where they work, where they shop and recreate. As far as I am concerned, this is all to the good.

Our freeways are designed by the ‘best and brightest’ engineers to be as safe as possible, allowing errant vehicles extra space, protecting hard objects with guard rails and impact attenuators (crash barriers), and using ridiculously wide travel lanes, yet still have very high crash rates. Spending more money apparently doesn’t make freeways safer, and the explanation for this is risk compensation, the proven effect that irresponsible drivers will increase their unsafe behavior to maintain the same level of risk. Think about the daily news items about crashes that close freeways for significant periods of time, and how often they happen. None of these need to happen, and I’d argue that an irresponsible drivers is the primary cause of each and every one of them. This post is about local streets, not freeways, but it is worth remembering that irresponsible drivers are everywhere.

I don’t believe that one single death or severe injury for a walker or bicyclist is worth any amount of convenience for motor vehicle drivers. Not one.

So, I ask every transportation agency in the Sacramento region to:

cease widening roads, forever
analyze all one-way roads with three or more lanes to determine the most dangerous ones, and convert these within two years
analyze all two-way streets with more than one lane per direction for the most dangerous ones, and convert these within five years
analyze the remaining roads that are not one lane per direction, for the most dangerous ones, and convert these within ten years
complete conversion of all roads within twenty years
stop victim blaming

prudent vs. irresponsible drivers

2020/04/042020/04/04 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

The previous post was about prudent drivers. The table below shows how I think of prudent drivers, and irresponsible drivers. It is so hard to not be snarky about driver behavior, but I have toned it down quite a bit. If you think I am exaggerating, then you don’t spend much time on the roads walking and bicycling. I spend a lot of time doing both, probably averaging three hours per day, all of it closely observing driver behavior and the roadway built environment, because it is both my job and my advocacy. The irresponsible behavior is something I see every day, from a significant percentage of drivers. Notice that I did not use the term negligent driver, as is the legal term in my prior post on a prudent driver, because only some of this is negligent; much of it is just sociopathic.

Prudent Driver	Irresponsible Driver
yields to pedestrians in crosswalks and waiting to cross	never yields to pedestrians
takes turn at stop sign intersections	goes out of turn at stop sign intersections
obeys speed limits, within 5 mph	drives as fast as possible in all situations
on multi-lane roads, always slows or stops if a vehicle in another lane is stopped	on multi-lane roads, pulls around other vehicles that are stopped, honks, and proceeds at full speed
rarely uses their car horn, and only to prevent a crash	often uses their car horn to make those other idiots pay attention and get out of the way
is aware of what is going on around them	is focused on other things than the road
doesn’t use their smart phone while driving, other than wayfinding	holds ongoing conversation on smart phone; texts when they think they can get away with it
passes bicyclists with a safe distance, even when it means waiting	yells at, honks at, and close-passes bicyclists, because they don’t belong on the road
believes all people have a right to share the public space on the roadway	believes that right to the roadway is determined by the value of their vehicle and social status
will do anything to avoid a crash	revels in crashes when they know they are right
knows the the cost of building and maintaining roads is subsidized by everyone	is certain that gas tax monies are being illegally diverted to other uses
knows that parking is never ‘free’ and someone, or all of us, are paying	believes that the right to free parking is guaranteed in the constitution, and that the parking space in front of their house belongs to them
could be a male or female (or non-binary)	is almost always a male

a prudent driver

2020/04/04 Dan Allison1 Comment

700. Basic Standard of Care: A person must use reasonable care in driving a vehicle. Drivers must keep a lookout for pedestrians, obstacles, and other vehicles. They must also control the speed and movement of their vehicles. The failure to use reasonable care in driving a vehicle is negligence.
Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instructions, 2019

The term ‘prudent driver’ does not exist in law or case law for California, though it does for some other states. The concept is useful enough that I’d like to explore it here. The term is closely related to other concepts such as a ‘reasonable person’, ‘~~prudent man~~‘, ‘prudent person’, ‘duty of care’, and ‘standard of care’. The Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instructions (CACI) document, excerpted above, is often referred to a ‘case law’, instructions for how to interpret legal codes, based on court findings. Many terms in California Vehicle Code are left intentionally fuzzy, but case law removes much of, but not all of, this fuzziness. In civil law, which is what this document covers, the three criteria for establishing liability are negligence, causation, and harm, meaning that the person acted in a negligent way, and harm was caused by the negligence.

Of the two issues most relevant to people walking, speeding and failure to yield are the most significant.

706. Basic Speed Law (Veh. Code, § 22350): A person must drive at a reasonable speed. Whether a particular speed is reasonable depends on the circumstances such as traffic, weather, visibility, and road conditions. Drivers must not drive so fast that they create a danger to people or property.
Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instructions, 2019

Section 706: Basic Speed Law (and sections 707 and 708), presents the idea that violation of the speed limit is not, per se, evidence of negligence on the part of the driver, but that the test is whether the speed was reasonable. In most European countries, violation of speed limits is negligence, but unfortunately that is not the case in the US. But the document does lay out pretty clearly that the driver is responsible for controlling their vehicle and anticipating the presence of other users on the roadway.

710. Duties of Care for Pedestrians and Drivers in Crosswalk (Veh. Code, § 21950): A driver of a vehicle must yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian who is crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. When approaching a pedestrian who is within any marked or unmarked crosswalk, a driver must use reasonable care and must reduce his or her speed or take any other action necessary to ensure the safety of the pedestrian.
A pedestrian must also use reasonable care for his or her own safety. A pedestrian may not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle that is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard. A pedestrian also must not unnecessarily stop or delay traffic while in a marked or unmarked crosswalk.
The failure of a pedestrian to exercise reasonable care does not relieve a driver of a vehicle from the duty of exercising reasonable care for the safety of any pedestrian within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection.
Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instructions, 2019

Section 710 covers the failure to yield to pedestrians violation, CVC 21950. The case law does have some interesting quotes:

“While it is the duty of both the driver of a motor vehicle and a pedestrian, using a public roadway, to exercise ordinary care, that duty does not require necessarily the same amount of caution from each. The driver of a motor vehicle, when ordinarily careful, will be alertly conscious of the fact that he is in charge of a machine capable of projecting into serious consequences any negligence of his own. […]”

“It is undisputed that defendant did not yield the right of way to plaintiff. Such failure constitutes a violation of the statute and negligence as a matter of law in the absence of reasonable explanation for defendant’s conduct.”

To summarize, my interpretation of the judicial guidance is:

Drivers must control the speed of their vehicle, no matter what the posted speed limit, in recognition that they must always be aware of other users of the roadway and take all reasonable precautions to ensure that crashes do not occur.
Drivers must yield to pedestrians who are exercising reasonable care in crossing the street, and the pedestrian has a presumption of right-of-way in the absence of other evidence.

So, a prudent driver would not be negligent, and a negligent driver would not be prudent.

Next post, more about how a prudent driver behaves.

the city could do this now

2020/03/312020/03/31 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

Some things the City of Sacramento could do today, and this week, to improve transportation and safety now and in the future:

Paint red curb offsets for all marked and unmarked crosswalks. These are upstream offsets, which have a strong safety value of increasing the visibility of drivers and walkers to each other. Downstream offsets, beyond the crosswalk, are much less important. Paint is cheap! Yes, maintenance of paint is more expensive, but this is important enough to make the investment.
Set all pedestrian signals to auto-recall, city-wide. Later we can have a discussion about whether to leave them this way, and how this interacts with the audible signals for limited vision people. I’m NOT saying disconnect the buttons, they would work if you pressed them, rather, that you no longer need to press them.
Convert the southbound light rail lane on 12th Street from a shared general purpose travel lane to a transit lane, from C Street to K Street. Having drivers interfere with light rail should never be OK. Consider doing the same for the portions of 7th Street and 8th Street where there is excess vehicle capacity.
Enforce, with a vengeance, speeding and failure to yield to pedestrian laws. Impound the cars and revoke the licenses of anyone who has more than one of these violations in a week. Our streets have been taken over by lawless joy-riders, and we need to take them back, for the safety of walkers, bicyclists, and other people in vehicles, and yes, people in adjacent buildings. Yes, these situations will end up in court, about whether the city has the power to do this, but in the meanwhile, we get these people off the street. This is an emergency, after all, and this seems a reasonable use of police emergency powers.
Close at least one street of at least a eighth mile length in every census tract. Since census tracts vary by population size, in a very rough way, this distributes the closed streets in the fairest manner. It provides people safe walking space in their neighborhoods, to ensure physical distancing.
Close the extra lanes on any street that has more than two lanes per direction, and re-allocate that space to either pedestrians or bicyclists, as demand seems to indicate.

There is construction going on right now on N Street adjacent to Capitol Park. The street has been narrowed from three lanes to one lane, and it is working just fine. The prudent driver, the one following speed limits, or at least in the range, now sets the speed of the roadway, and the egregious violators have to live with it. Which is, I think, why I’m not seeing problems on N Street right now, and am still seeing it on other wide roadways.

What else would you recommend, actions that could take place almost immediately and would not cost much?

I & 12th crashes

2020/03/302020/03/30 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

The city has installed substantial bollards on the southwest corner of I Street and 12th Street in an effort to protect the Bangkok@12 Thai Restaurant there.

There were at least two major injury crashes into the restaurant in 2019, and the location has a history of crashes (see https://www.sacbee.com/article235349392.html for one example). There were 26 collisions at this intersection in the five year period 2015-2019. This is the most for any intersection in the central city, with the next closest being 19th Street and X Street, at 17.

Why? Well, the primary reason is that this is the intersection of two 3-lane, one-way arterials, both of which are known to have a history of speeding. The city installed a speed display sign on 12th Street approaching I Street, but has not done so for I Street approaching 12th Street. I had not noticed this sign before yesterday, so I don’t know how long it has been there. Even a brief watch of it indicated that many drivers are exceeding the speed limit, some egregiously so, at more than 10 mph over the speed limit. And then, of course, there are the bollards pictured above. These are not solutions.

The city has identified the section of I Street east of 12th for a reduction in travel lanes from three to two, and that will help. But to the west, no reduction, so drivers will likely be speeding up through the intersection to spread out into the increased capacity. For 12th Street, a reduction from four (!) to three lanes will occur north of H Street, which may reduce speeds approaching here, but in the section between H Street and J Street, it will remain three lanes.

I strongly feel that all roadways of three or more lanes must be reduced to two lanes. Drivers simply cannot be trusted to behave properly on 3-lane roads. It doesn’t matter how much signing we add, or bollards we add, drivers will still speed and will endanger walkers, pedestrians, people in other vehicles, and people sitting down to eat a meal at restaurants.

Solution? The reduction in lanes on I Street must continue westward at least to 10th Street (I would continue it all the way to the freeway, but that is another issue). 12th Street must be reduced from three lanes to two lanes in the section between H Street and J Street (I would reduce it from C Street south). Most of the traffic on 12th Street turns left onto J Street, only a portion continuing south, so having one through lane and one left turn lane would not significantly reduce capacity, but would make things a great deal safer. A bonus would be that the left hand travel lane can be allocated to the exclusive use of the southbound light rail tracks. Currently, the southbound lane is shared between motor vehicles and light rail, and the light rail train is often delayed by congestion and by left turning vehicles. Two birds with one stone, as the saying goes.

The city’s Vision Zero effort focuses on corridors, stretches of street with a high crash rate, and this is not a bad focus, given that most of these corridors are in disadvantaged/disinvested communities. It does not focus on intersections, not even on very high crash rate intersections. San Francisco’s Vision Zero program, one of the leading in the country, identifies the top five corridors, AND the top five intersections. There has been significant though not necessarily complete infrastructure work on each of these. I would like to see the I Street and 12th Street intersection be prioritized for Sacramento.

Who is out there driving?

2020/03/302020/03/30 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

There has been a lot of discussion Twitter the last week about drivers speeding on roads, just because they can, with the streets mostly empty. Agreement has come in from a wide variety of places, but there are also doubters, who say this is not happening. So, I decided to pay more attention to what is going on. These observations are from Sacramento central city, east Sacramento, and south of Broadway to Fruitridge Road, but mostly central city.

On three lane one-way streets, egregiously poor driver behavior is rampant. It is less common on two lane one-way streets, but still noticeable. It is pretty much absent on two-way streets.

I took some time to observe drivers on two three lane one-way streets in the central city, J Street, and 12th Street, both of which I know to have speeding problems when they are not congested. Both locations had signals every block. I suspect driver behavior would be much worse on sections without signals every block, but have not done observations yet.

On J Street, 38% of the drivers were doing something significantly unsafe or obnoxious. On 12th Street, it was 45%. This was Sunday afternoon. What, specifically, was I seeing?

drivers going more than 10 mph over the speed limit (limit is 25 mph on these two streets), sometimes well over
muscle cars revving up to high speed between signals and then braking hard for the signal (usually, sometimes they just blew the red light); what I mean by muscle cars is vehicles with a horsepower rating far more that would ever be needed in a city
vehicles with exhaust systems modified to be very loud, and which were being driven in a way so as to generate that noise
drivers making right or left hand turns, against red signals, without really slowing down

I do not have a radar gun, though it would probably be a good investment. But I have spent many hours at speed display signs calibrating my perceptions of vehicle speed to the what the sign says. There is a speed display sign on 12th Street between H Street and I Street. Though most drivers (the ones not mentioned above) were going no more than 25 mph, some were going up to 35 mph, accelerating in just that one block, and several drivers pegged the display, which means it blanks out the speed and displays a message such as ‘too fast’, which on this sign I think means over 35 mph. How fast would they have been going if the signals were not here?

You might have some hope that the police would enforce against this. Sorry to dash your hopes, but every single Sacramento Police Department vehicle I saw today was going well over the speed limit. Not just a little, and not responding to calls (no siren, no lights), but well over.

Of course the long-term solution to this is not enforcement, but reconfiguring roadways to eliminate ALL three lane (or more roads), and to convert most one-way roads to two-way. The city is working on some of that, but at a snail’s pace, as streets are being resurfaced. We need to accelerate this change, to keep all of us safe, today, during the pandemic, and beyond. Yes, I am even including drivers and their passengers in the ‘us’, as they are as much in danger from this behavior as walkers and bicyclists.

I know that there are also people out there driving for valid reasons, going to essential jobs, to medical care, to buy groceries (though a lot of them could be bicycling). The best thing we can do for those people is to remove the others.

Getting Around Sacramento

by foot, bicycle, and public transit (car-free!)

Author: Dan Allison