BMTS Article Digest

September - October 2018

BMTS Pedestrian & Bicycle Advisory Committee Members: The following is a compilation of articles that may be of interest to BMTS Pedestrian & Bicycle Advisory Committee

members. This and past digests can also be accessed in the Pedestrian & Bicycle Advisory Committee page of

www.bmtsonline.com. Scott

CenterLines is the bi-weekly electronic news bulletin of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking. CenterLines is our

way of quickly delivering news and information you can use to create more walkable and bicycle-friendly communities.

Go to www.BCWalks.com!

Check out these websites for Bike & Pedestrian Information!

https://www.facebook.com/coexistnys/ and https://www.youtube.com/user/CoexistNYS or www.capitalcoexist.org

In particular, view the interactive educational video clips.

Take a look at the National Center for Bicycling & Walking's newsletter, CenterLines . You can also arrange to have it emailed directly to you.

See http://www.bikewalk.org/newsletter.ph p .

for

The Dutch Reach: A No-Tech Way to Save Bicyclists’ Lives

This simple change in the way you get out of your car can save lives — of cyclists, drivers and passengers. Here’s how to do it, and why it’s so effective.

Image Credit - Calum Heath

By Tanya Mohn

Oct. 5, 2018

If Michael Charney has his way, more Americans would adopt a simple method to prevent “doorings,” a type of collision when a driver or passenger in a parked car opens a door into the path of a cyclist.

He calls the maneuver the “Dutch Reach,” and it works like this: When you are about to exit the car, you reach across your body for the door handle with your far or opposite hand. This action forces you to turn toward the side view mirror, out and then back over your shoulder to be sure a bicyclist is not coming from behind. Only then do you slowly open the door.

“Dodging open car doors is a daily risk” for urban cyclists, said Dr. Charney, a retired physician and dedicated cyclist.

Fatal bike crashes are on the rise in the United States; in 2016 the highest number of cyclist deaths since 1991 was recorded. The research doesn’t say how many of those deaths are from doorings specifically, or how effective the Dutch Reach method is in preventing crashes, but a study done in 2015 in Vancouver, British Columbia, found that the car-to-cyclist crash type with the most injuries was doorings, said Kay Teschke, professor emeritus at the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

“A lot of people think because cars are stopped, doorings can’t be serious, but they are very common, and they absolutely can be very serious,” she said. “There have been deaths.”

Dr. Teschke and other experts say infrastructure — like designated bike lanes that separate traffic and bicyclists — is a key to safety, but there are actions cyclists and drivers can take on their own.

Make It a Habit, Start With a Ribbon

Dr. Charney created the Dutch Reach Project in 2016 after a 27-year-old nursing student rode into an open car door and died five blocks from his home in Cambridge, Mass. Her death followed several other recent cyclist fatalities in the area.

He said the Dutch Reach is taught in some bike safety classes and professional fleet trainings, and now two states — Massachusetts and Illinois — include it in their official driver’s manuals. Even so, the method is not widely known or used in the United States.

Dr. Charney acknowledges that it is difficult to change behavior and learn new habits. “I had a hard time retooling myself,” he said. “But it’s a simple behavioral fix; if you do it, it works.”

He suggests putting a ribbon on your car door latch as a visual reminder that you’re supposed to use your far hand to open the door instead of just instinctually opening the door as you always have.

This small maneuver goes beyond being a good Samaritan. It can help drivers and passengers avoid serious and costly damage to cars and the hassle of repairs, and protects them from stepping out into traffic and getting injured or killed by other cars, as well as bicycles.

Tips That Go Beyond the Dutch Reach

There is no name in Dutch for this technique — it’s just second nature to Dutch drivers, and has been for years. It has been deeply ingrained in the country’s culture.

“It’s just what Dutch people do,” said Fred Wegman, professor emeritus of Traffic Safety at Delft University of Technology and the former managing director of the National Institute for Road Safety Research SWOV in the Netherlands. “All Dutch are taught it. It’s part of regular driver education.”

The robust bike safety culture that exists in the Netherlands today was not always the case. Serious injury and death were once more prevalent.

“But they just did not accept it. They systematically and proactively went about changing their safety systems,” Dr. Teschke said. “They tried big things and small things to see what will work. They just take safety really, really seriously.”

We can, too, she explained, even if we don’t have the same cycling culture, or even the same number of cyclists. Here are some other tactics that we could all apply.

Teach Bicycle Safety Early

That education begins long before getting behind the wheel. Dutch schoolchildren starting at about 10 to 12 years old learn about road safety for roughly one hour a week for 40 weeks. “It’s part of the curriculum in primary school,” Professor Wegman said. Schoolchildren learn how to ride bikes safely

and afterward are tested on their bikes in traffic. They learn the importance of shared roadways to make sure that both drivers and cyclists are aware of each other and know each other’s rules, he said.

He said he had observed that a number of cities and countries in Europe have embraced the Dutch Reach, and so can Americans. “It’s not unique to the Dutch” anymore, he said.

The League of American Bicyclists offers resources to cyclists of all ages to learn about Smart Cycling — from safety tips to how to find a local bike safety class.

Keep Bike Running Lights On, Day and Night

In a recent Danish study, keeping your bicycle lights on all the time reduced the chances of a collision by nearly 50 percent, Dr. Teschke said. Bike-sharing programs typically keep the lights on in their fleets, she said, most likely one of the reasons those programs tend to have lower crash rates than for those riding personal bikes.

Consider Professional Defensive Driver Training

Driver training is, in general, more rigorous and more costly in the Netherlands than in the United States. “In the Netherlands, parents are not allowed to teach their children,” Professor Wegman said. “We have formal driver education schools.”

Instruction is highly regulated, and classes are expensive The cost of getting a driver's license in 2017 was about $2,734 (2,300 euros), which includes about 38 hours of professional instruction, he said, quoting figures from the Dutch Driver License Agency.

The far hand method of opening the door is included in drivers’ training and the exam that candidates take before getting licensed. “If they fail to do it or do it incorrectly, they fail the test,” Professor Wegman said. “The exam is serious business.”

It’s never too late to improve your driving knowledge. Drivers of all ages and levels can get instruction on and offline offered by many organizations, including AAA, AARP and the National Safety Council will teach the “Far Hand Reach” technique to both operator-side and passenger-side users starting in January.

A Survivor Shares His Advice

Peter Hahn, 38, an analyst for the Defense Department and a regular bicyclist in Washington, had several near misses over the years, but he avoided a serious crash until last year when he biked down a quiet side street at 15-plus miles per hour. “As I approached an intersection, a door opened and my swerve wasn’t enough to avoid the door corner poking into my front spokes,” he recounted, and he was launched onto the pavement.

He awoke to the sounds of a fire truck and an ambulance, “and someone telling me not to move. I had to have 11 centimeters of titanium and eight screws inserted to stabilize” a serious arm fracture, he said, and was in a cast for weeks, attended weekly physical therapy sessions and has a lifelong scar.

“I lost a third of a year to that injury. I’m able to do pull-ups and hold my infant son,” he said, “but I will never be the same. If the car driver had opened — at first — a crack, instead of fully, I would have made it home that night.”

The Dutch Reach could have an effect if it becomes second nature, “like checking both ways before you cross a road,” Mr. Hahn said. Until then, his advice to cyclists: ride a foot farther out on quiet side streets. For drivers: “a mere glance in the side-view plus blind spot would all but eliminate dooring.”

“The Dutch have evolved into a culture that respects the right for everyone to get home safely,” Dr. Charney said. “It’s a change I’d love to see here.”

COMMUNITY

Socially sustainable communities are

more than friends and families 'Weak ties' are the strings that thread their way through the social fabric, allowing information, culture, and

work to flow. Fragmented communities break down those ties.

STEVE PRICE SEP. 4, 2018

Articles in the popular press have suggested that there’s an epidemic of loneliness, that Americans

have fewer and fewer meaningful connections to other people. Studies show that unrelieved

loneliness has physiological effects leading to higher rates of morbidity and mortality, especially in

older adults,[i] and may be fueling the opioid crisis and upticks in suicide rates. Yet loneliness is an

Photo simulation by Steve Price

imperfect indicator that something is socially awry in America. It’s not so much whether

Americans have social lives or not, but rather what form that social life takes.

The design of our cities and towns can produce social deprivations that don’t trigger feelings of

loneliness, yet are grave. America is experiencing increasing social fragmentation, a form of social

deprivation. People can be cozy with friends, sustained by family, and flush with Facebook friends

in a society of declining civic values and increasing social inequities. There is no one explanation

for this, but the legacies of sprawl development are contributing factors: the deconstruction of

public spaces, the geographic segregation of Americans by class and race, and the elevation of

private experience over public.

Too many suburbs are failing to provide their residents with the support they need to get ahead.

According to 2017 Brookings Institute testimony to Congress, “Suburbs in the country’s largest

metro areas saw the number of residents living below the poverty line grow by 57 percent between

2000 and 2015. . . . Suburbs have become home to more poor residents than cities.”[ii] Physical

dispersion of people in many suburbs, with the lack of opportunities for people to serendipitously

encounter each other in public spaces, or even physically see people outside of the house or

workplace, handicaps an individual’s ability to make productive connections with others. Being

“well connected” should not just be a description of the wealthy.

Lonely feelings are not so bad if the feelings prod us into positive community engagement—

assuming there is an intact physical community to engage with. Many can dodge the loneliness

bullet because of strong ties to family and friends, but without physical community and the

acquaintances it can provide, family and close friends may give us feelings of contentment without

equipping us to meet existential threats.

Weak ties are powerful

In the 1970s, sociologist Mark Granovetter

wrote a widely discussed paper distinguishing

strong social ties between family and friends

from weak ties between acquaintances,

colleagues, and neighbors. A community of

people tied together only by strong ties will be a

fragmented one:

“Individuals with few weak ties will be deprived

of information from distant parts of the social

system and will be confined to the provincial

news and views of their close friends. This

deprivation will not only insulate them from the

latest ideas and fashions but may put them in a

disadvantaged position in the labor market,

where advancement can depend . . . on knowing about appropriate job openings at just the right

time. Furthermore, such individuals may be difficult to organize or integrate into political

movements of any kind.”[iii]

Weak ties are the strings that thread their way through the social fabric, supporting and nourishing

these clumps of intimates, allowing flows of information, culture, and work that lead to learning

and opportunities. The benefit is reflected in the old dictum, “If you want to learn about something,

ask somebody who knows. If they don’t know, ask somebody who knows somebody who knows.”

The term “weak ties” belies their importance for strong community.

The emotional coziness of family and friends shouldn’t be so idealized that they make us

undervalue and obstruct these seemingly casual connective threads. Whole societies are held back

because of cultural dissuasion against engaging with strangers. In America, the strong ties of family

life are highly valued. Traditionally so were the casual ties that transcend kin, clan, and tribe.

Alexander Hamilton remarked about a colonial tavern he visited, that it offered “a genuine social

solvent with a very mixed company of different nations and religions,” and from this regular and

informal gathering “developed an amazing number of social clubs of a more carefully organized

type.”[iv]

There is much debate among researchers about the primary importance of strong or weak ties. Like

everything in life, it depends on the situation. For political activism, strong ties can be where ideas

and passions are grown. As anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said, “Never doubt that a

small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that

ever has.” Strong ties can be the creative crucible for social change. Weak ties are still needed to

get the group’s ideas out into the larger world. In any case, both strong and weak ties are necessary

for healthy resilient communities.

In a consumer society selling comfortable furnishings and gadgets that promise privacy and

control, entreating citizens to leave the house and involve themselves with strangers is a moral and

civic challenge. One hundred and eight-five years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville warned

in Democracy in America, “Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each

member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his

family and his friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves

society at large to itself.”[v] He warned of American citizens shutting themselves up in a “narrow

selfishness, marked out by four sunk fences and a quickset hedge.”[vi]

Socially malnourished and not knowing it

In 2014, Australian researchers reviewing data from American colleges and high schools reported

an overall increase in extraversion and self-esteem, but not loneliness, among high school

students.[vii] (In the 1950s, less than 10 percent of teens said they were “very important persons.” A

half century later, over 80 percent said so.[viii]) Yet the research showed high school students with

weakening social networks. The researchers distinguished two different things: subjective feelings

of being lonely, left out, and longing for friendship, which they call “subjective isolation,” versus

“social network isolation,” a measure of social support. Rather than describing feelings, social

network isolation denotes whether an individual is well connected enough to get help from people

in a time of need. The teens were not very lonely, but also not well connected.

An analogy can be made with hunger versus malnutrition. Loneliness, like hunger, is a natural

indicator of immediate organismic need and is made obvious to the person by physical feelings.

Social network deprivation, like malnutrition, is not so obvious. People may not feel hunger yet be

malnourished, a phenomenon all too common when junk food replaces healthy food. Likewise,

people can feel socially satisfied, but actually be socially precarious. People in poor neighborhoods

may have close friends and families, but not know anyone who can inform them about job

opportunities. Seniors in affluent neighborhoods may have friends all over the world, but not have

neighbors to check in on them if they fall. People who live alone can be happy in their solitude, yet

research from Brigham Young University shows data revealing that such voluntary solitude

shortens life.[ix] Although the high school students were content with a handful of friends and few

acquaintances, that may not be enough support in an emergency: feelings of self-sufficiency and

independence can be a dangerous illusion.

Divided we fall

America’s growing social inequities are affected by the selfish machinations of privileged and

wealthy people, but the fault also lies with the decline of walkability of our towns and cities and the

idealization of cozy domesticity. We are living in times of ever-increasing frequency of disasters.

Worldwide the number of natural catastrophes that resulted in insurable losses increased three-fold

over the last 35 years.[x]These numbers will increase as climate change effects increase. If disaster

strikes, you don’t want to be living in a balkanized town divided into family fiefdoms, cliques, and

tribes. We need residents of our towns and cities to know each other, even if just casually. Three or

four intimates may not be enough, or even available, to help you survive a massive storm,

earthquake, or fire.

A good test of the quality of casual connectedness in a neighborhood is if people know each other

by name. Research from the 1980s found that neighborhood streets that ignore the needs of

pedestrians and are overly wide with fast moving vehicles, deter social interaction between

neighbors, making them anonymous to each other.[xi] Police departments say that simply knowing

who neighbors are is a significant deterrent to crime. An auto-oriented suburb defined by wide

streets that don’t connect, residential areas divided by class, and a population that spends almost all

of its time in houses, cars, and office cubicles, thwarts the conditions for an expansive social life

that helps in times of trouble.

Walkability is not enough

Nevertheless, walkable urban form does not guarantee healthy community life. The nation has

plenty of neighborhoods with narrow interconnected streets, buildings close to sidewalks, and the

vestiges of neighborhood centers, yet the places are depressed. Poor neighborhoods are not the only

problem. Newer, more prosperous places that have active sidewalk-oriented retail, street trees and

lamps, and lots of people living densely in nearby apartment buildings, can still fail to interconnect

people.

Democracy is dependent on the willingness, interest, and ease of ordinary people to engage with

different people in discussions about the issues of the day. In many communities, attendance at city

council and PTA meetings looks pretty good even if there are no discernable town centers and

everyone drives all the time. Civic life may appear to be alive and well, but are different ethnicities,

races, classes, and immigrant groups at the meetings? Do people see, meet, and talk with each other

in public places? Those places shouldn’t impose unaffordable entry costs against the people who

would most benefit from being there. Does visiting those places require a car or a wad of money in

your pocket?

Urban form and the culture of the community should be mutually reinforcing. The terms “transit-

oriented development,” “walkability,” and “compact urbanism,” don’t capture this essential quality

of casual connectedness that makes for healthy democratic life. The terms describe elements that

are important for a sustainable, post-carbon future but one of the greatest threats to the planet is an

uninformed public that won’t engage enough to vote. That people can walk to a transit stop from an

apartment building is a net positive, but is it enough?

Inviting public spaces are crucial places where you can develop acquaintances outside your small

inner circle. Are there parks, public squares, and coffee shops in your neighborhood? Some see

these things as harbingers of gentrification, but they are not just accoutrements of the comfortable.

Every neighborhood needs these meeting places. Social life should scale from the cozy and

comfortable to the neighborly and civic, for rich and poor alike. We should design our towns and

cities to make that possible.

[i] John T. Cacioppo, Louise C. Hawkley, Greg J. Norman, Gary G. Berntson, “Social isolation,”

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, June 8, 2011

[ii] Brookings Institute, “Testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, Subcommittee

on Human Resources,” February 15, 2017

[iii] Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited,” Sociological

Theory, Volume 1, (1983, John Wiley & Sons), p. 201-233.

[iv] Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place, (1985, New York: Paragon House)

[v] Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 2, (1835, New York: Vintage Classics,

1990), p. 98.

[vi] Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 1, (1835, New York: Vintage Books,

1945), p. 260.

[vii] D. Matthew, T. Clark, Natalie J. Loxton, Stephanie J. Tobin. “Declining Loneliness Over Time:

Evidence From American Colleges and High Schools,” Personality and Social Psychology

Bulletin, November 2014.

[viii] Tim Elmore, “What Really Cultivates Self Esteem in Students?” Psychology Today, September

19, 2013.

[ix] J. Holt-Lunstad, T. B. Smith, M. Baker, T. Harris, D. Stephenson. “Loneliness and Social

Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Perspectives on Psychological

Science, 2015.

[x] Peter Hoeppe, “Trends in weather related disasters – Consequences for insurers and

society,” Elsevier, 2016

[xi] Donald Appleyard, Livable Streets, (1981, University of California Press)

Steve Price of Urban Advantage communicates the urban design principles of Smart Growth

and New Urbanism to non-professional audiences through photo-realistic illustration. For 12

years, he served on the board of the Form-Based Codes Institute.

Western Avenue now. Source: The City of South

Bend

POLICY

Revitalizing

struggling

corridors in a

post-industrial city The City of South Bend focuses on complete streets to spur investment in neglected neighborhoods.

ROBERT STEUTEVILLE SEP. 10, 2018

The West Side Main Streets plan is using limited resources to revitalize two struggling four-mile-

long corridors of the post-industrial City of South Bend.

Until a few years ago, the two corridors—Lincolnway West and Western Avenue—felt like “truck-

oriented highways,” plagued by poorly maintained and vacant properties. The project focuses on

walkability, placemaking, façade improvement, better transit, parcel consolidation, and

redevelopment to convert the corridors to a series of distinct neighborhood centers.

South Bend takes a complete streets approach to revitalization in general. The city’s “smart streets”

initiative is credited with bringing over $90 million in new development to downtown. “There’s

been more that’s happened in the last 36 to 48 months in downtown South Bend than has happened

probably in the two decades prior to this,” Ed Bradley, commercial real estate developer, recently

told The South Bend Tribune. Some old vacant hotels have been converted to residential, the first

new office building in decades is under review, and new residential buildings are going up.

The downtown rebirth is necessary to revitalize the West Side, the hardest-hit area of a city that fell

in population from 132,000 in 1960 to 101,000 in 2010—but has recently begun to slowly grow

again.

The West Side has suffered population loss, vacancies, and blight. The housing stock is old, and

many of the buildings need significant renovation. Home values generally range from $30,000 to

$80,000—a range that does not support conventional mortgage transactions from financial

institutions. This in turn leads to a situation where potential home buyers, wanting to invest in their

neighborhoods, are shut out of the housing market unless they can afford to purchase the home in

full.

On Lincolnway West the city used restriping, bike lanes, on-street parking, trees, property

acquisition, and engineering work to make

the area more appealing and pedestrian

friendly. On Western Avenue, sidewalks,

trees, pedestrian-oriented lighting, and street

furniture were installed. The Western

Avenue corridor has some active community

groups that are drawing attention to the area,

such as West Side South Bend, which

promotes West Side Wednesdays.

Western Avenue corridor before and after. Source: City of South Bend.

A facade improvement program was

implemented on both corridors. Twenty-eight

grants were given from 2015-2018 for facade

improvements on the two corridors, targeted

at commercial areas. The 50 percent

matching grants have totaled $611,957.

These nodes have seen little or no facade

improvements in several decades. The

recipients are mostly “mom and pop” stores

and other small businesses.

The city has also made zoning changes designed to spur redevelopment and improve streetscapes.

The most effective has been to remove minimum parking requirements in commercial areas of the

west side, according to Tim Corcoran, planning director. “Immediately when we made that change

some businesses were able to do some things that they couldn’t before. One owner was able to

move forward with a banquet hall, for example,” Simultaneously, the city put in place some basic

form-based standards that are not too prescriptive, but ensure that new buildings will be built to the

right of way to create a main street environment.

“Everything we do is with a complete streets mentality,” Corcoran says. “The planning department

works closely with public works in designing streetscape. We are taking a half-acre of pavement

out of an intersection this summer without reducing capacity. We are creating land and a

development parcel that didn’t exist before.” The complete streets approach is citywide, but a good

deal of the focus is on the West Side.

The city is in the early stages of trying to get new housing development on the West Side. A market

study by Zimmerman Volk shows that the city’s south and west sides can absorb between 180 and

230 new “missing middle” housing types annually. On the West Side, that is most likely to occur

near downtown. Lacking anchor

institutions, the revitalized downtown is

one of the few reasons for investment on

the West Side.

The city has been acquiring vacant

properties for redevelopment about a mile

from downtown and also in other target

areas of the West Side, but construction is

likely to require investment on the part of

the city. One possible strategy was

employed in the 1990s by Notre Dame

University in another part of South Bend.

The university guaranteed a sale price to

new home purchasers for a period of

time. The program ended after values

rose and the neighborhood revitalized.

Phase 1 of the project on Lincolnway West.

Source: City of South Bend.

The City plans on fostering partnerships to develop a small-scale pilot project as part of a broader

neighborhood planning effort —Phase 1 is about six blocks with the potential for new public open

space and a mix of housing types with a focus on missing middle housing. The project is located

between Sherman Avenue and Harrison Street on mostly vacant parcels just north of Lincolnway

West. This would involve financial institutions, developers and builders, neighborhood

organizations and stakeholders, community development corporations, and elected and city

officials in all aspects of the development process.

The West Side Main Streets plan won a 2015 CNU Charter Award for Torti Gallas and Partners

and the City of South Bend for vision and implementation.

Robert Steuteville is editor of Public Square: A CNU Journal and senior communications adviser for the

Congress for the New Urbanism.