The Daily Agenda: Road dieting to create safer streets
Wide streets encourage fast driving, but there's an easy fix for that ... Some of Tucson's streets are going on a "road diet" ... Sales tax details coming soon.
Tucson is well-known in cycling circles for events like El Tour de Tucson and Cyclovia, and for the Chuck Huckelberry Loop, a 137-mile system of paved pathways and bike lanes.
But in recent years, Tucson has also been called out for the danger its streets pose to bicyclists, and frequently makes it onto lists of the country’s most hazardous cycling spots.
Just last month, Tucson was named the most dangerous city for cyclists, with 1.29 fatalities per 100,000 people, according to a study by a personal injury law firm.
These kinds of studies can be subjective, but the local data paints a similar picture. And the streets this year seem to be particularly deadly for bicyclists, pedestrians and people riding motorcycles.
As of Saturday, there have been 32 traffic fatalities in the city and only eight of those deaths involved people driving or riding in a vehicle, according to the Tucson Police Department. The other 24 were pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists. These totals are up from last year, especially in the case of pedestrians, who have seen a 50% increase in fatalities from last year.
And while speeding isn’t listed as a factor in every fatal crash report, one local expert says the speed at which a vehicle travels is always a crucial part of the equation and it’s also the place where most of the solutions can be found.
That’s why groups like the Living Streets Alliance are helping officials rethink Tucson’s streets so they’re focused on slowing drivers down. This means pushing back against the idea of road widening projects and helping to increase traffic calming features on city streets and in neighborhoods.
“Travel speed really determines whether someone who is hit by a car will die,” said Evren Sönmez, LSA’s director of strategic policy and practice. “But it should be about moving people in a safe manner, as opposed to moving cars through intersections as quickly as possible”
One of the ways to accomplish this is through a technique called a “road diet,” which involves narrowing or removing lanes on multilane roads with the idea of reducing the number of lanes that pedestrians have to cross.
This can usually be accomplished without changing the curb-to-curb roadway width and can be as simple as re-striping the road, Sönmez said.
Another road diet option is to add a center turn lane, reallocating the leftover space for bike lanes or pedestrian areas. Adding a center turn lane also creates the opportunity to add pedestrian crossings or a refuge island, which can be easily paired with a crosswalk, according to Sönmez.
Re-striping wide lanes so that they are narrower is another way to help slow drivers down, with Sönmez saying that there’s evidence showing that narrower lanes encourage slower speeds.
“There have been studies around that. The city has seen crash reduction and improved safety on streets where road diets have been implemented,” she said, adding that there are additional road diet projects on the horizon. “We can’t do it on every street, but depending on the context, it may be an appropriate treatment where we can reduce conflicts on the road.”
The city is aware of the problem and is rethinking its approach to road design, including an upcoming Regional Transportation Authority project along 1st Avenue from Grant Road to River Road, Sönmez said.
“The city was able to get scope changed and a committee was formed to oversee the project,” she said. “This is an example of where the city is taking the approach to not widening, but improving safety and creating a better environment for people who are not in cars.”
The problem of road safety is a “pretty uniquely American problem among wealthy countries,” since communities were built around an auto-centric model, according to Sönmez.
But that means there’s plenty of room for improvement, she said.
“This is not a situation where it’s new or unknown. The problem we know and the solutions are there,” Sönmez said. “We can look at places that have gotten positive results.”
One of those places is San Francisco’s Tenderloin, a high-crash area that saw a 14% drop in crashes by implementing a process called daylighting, which makes intersections more visible to road users, especially pedestrians.
The idea is that if intersections don’t have obstructions like parked cars, then drivers, pedestrians and cyclists would be able to see each other better. Better sightlines reduce the likelihood of crashes.
The city is looking elsewhere and integrating evidence-based strategies into their work. And while redesigning the streets so that they’re a little less car-friendly but much more people and bicyclist-friendly seems like a monumental task, it’s well within the realm of possibility, Sönmez said.
“We created this. It’s a human-created problem and the streets are designed by human beings,” she said. “We did this and we can undo it.”
No Gaza resolution: We’ve got a lot of news today from Tuesday’s meeting of the Tucson City Council. First up is the council’s decision not to move forward with a resolution that would have called for a ceasefire in Gaza, Arizona Public Media’s Hannah Cree reports. Several council members, including Nikki Lee and Paul Cunningham, said they didn’t feel the Tucson community had a unified view of the conflict in Gaza. In the end Council member Lane Santa Cruz was the lone “aye” vote on whether to move forward with the resolution.
“What I am concerned about is the lack of a unified voice in this community,” Lee said. “I don't personally believe that we should try to come up with a single position or statement that attempts to speak for all of us as Mayor and Council, because of our own individual differences and thoughts on this matter.”
Time to talk turkey: The Tucson council voted in February to put a sales tax election on the ballot this summer, but they never explained any of the details. At yesterday’s council meeting, Cunningham said it was time to “talk turkey” about the sales tax. He called for the council to start hammering out the details within the next two weeks, saying that if they don’t, “we’re going to run out of time.” He suggested public safety and social work as goals for the revenue.
Fare-free for a while longer: Public transit in Tucson will remain fare-free until June of next year, the Arizona Luminaria’s John Washington reports. The Tucson council revisited the issue at a study session Tuesday and the whole council showed support for keeping free fares. They’ve been discussing various options to fund the transit system, but they haven’t decided on any specific one yet.
On the air: Last week, Caitlin was on the Buckmaster Show, talking with host Bill Buckmaster and County Administrator Jan Lesher about federal funding to support asylum seekers, the latest on the county’s plans for the jail, overcrowding at the Pima Animal Care Center, the ins and outs of the county budget, and more.
Education tidbits: In the Arizona Daily Star’s batch of education news nuggets, reporter Jessica Votipka touches on the expansion of Desert Christian Schools, the new principal at San Miguel High School, a Sahuarita High School student who is advancing in a nationwide poetry competition, and much more.
Forum tonight: You can hear from the two applicants trying to be the next Pima County Treasurer at a public forum tonight hosted by the League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson, the county said in a news release. Chris Ackerley and Patti Davidson are vying to replace Treasurer Beth Ford, who is resigning this week. The forum, which allows attendees to ask questions of the applicants, will be online only tonight at 6 p.m. You can read their resumes and letters of interest here.
226: The number of motor vehicle-related deaths in Pima County in 2023, according to the Office of the Medical Examiner.
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Can they pull back on the Grant Road widening project? This is a serious question, since you brought up pulling back on another design. Midtown is a wasteland waiting for more concrete and “Michigan Louies” — talk about an unsafe design that’s bad for bikes and confusing for drivers! I was a bus/bike commuter for many years when I worked at the UA and lived near Ft. Lowell Park — seven miles each way. The streets are far more dangerous now than they were the 1990s. The streets are wider and faster, the vehicles are giant-sized, delivery drivers are parking and driving every which way on neighborhood streets and there are no sidewalks! I recently walked to a store on Speedway and had a harrowing experience getting across the street at a hawk light. I had a conversation with a 30-something young man at one of the stores. He said he avoids crossing Speedway — regardless of how he’s traveling … on foot, on a bike or by car — because of how dangerous he perceives Speedway to be. Traffic was horrific yesterday.