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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And joining me is my friend, Colin Fiske, Executive Director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities, or better known in these parts as CRTP. Hey, Colin.

COLIN FISKE:

Hello, Tom.

WHEELER:

All right. So Colin, a lot of CRTP's work is looked at, looks at the big picture. How can we create communities that are healthy for their inhabitants, where we are encouraged to use active transportation, things like walking, biking, scooting, so on. But CRTP also is a response group. It responds to emerging and ongoing threats to safety as well. So you have been instrumental in collecting data, for example, in road safety through the use of street story. And when we realize that there's a hotspot where folks are getting into accidents, where there are pedestrians being hit, where the road isn't safe, we want to be able to respond quickly. And that's a priority for CRTP. So this show's episode is how can we get those safety improvements quickly, instead of waiting for a long project that will take a decade for Caltrans or a city to develop or wait for grant funding for. How can we take existing roads and move them to be safer more quickly? Yeah.

FISKE:

That's totally right. I think there's a certain amount, you know, even though we're advocating for these big changes and traditionally big changes take a long time, there's a lot of urgency behind the work that we do. On two levels, I would say maybe the most immediate is that safety issue. And of course, if there's a street or a highway or a road that's dangerous and we know people are regularly being injured or killed on it, then the longer it takes to fix that, the more people are going to be hurt or killed. And that just creates a real urgency to it. And the other thing, of course, is the climate. And I think listeners to the EcoNews report know that we don't have a whole lot of time to address that issue either. And so the faster that we can get low-carbon transportation infrastructure in place, the better for that, for the climate as well.

WHEELER:

And I don't know if you've noticed this either. I feel like I've noticed way more bikers, walkers these days. Maybe it's just because it's summer, but I think that the opening of the Bay Trail has had a really instrumental effect in getting people out on their bikes in particular more. So I'm noticing people more in our community, which is great, which is fantastic, but it also communicates the need to be able to have a street system that is safe for all road users. So let's get into how we can make our roads safer quickly. There are a number of projects going on. And the first is taking an existing project and making it a complete streets project, adding bells and whistles to what might be just an ordinary road repaving that when you go back in and you restripe that road, it's going to be safer. Do you want to talk about the conception of complete streets and some examples of projects in our community that exemplified this type of work?

FISKE:

Sure. So I think this is something that most people are pretty familiar with. This is the idea that when you repave a street, if you have a little extra space, maybe you paint a bike lane on there, or maybe you paint a crosswalk that was missing, because you're already doing a project. You're already going to have to repaint the lines on the street. You might as well add some infrastructure there. It doesn't really add anything to the cost to paint the lines in a different place. And so the cities of Arcata and Eureka have had for several years now complete streets policies, which CRTP encouraged them to adopt. And those basically say, whenever they do any project that affects a street in their jurisdiction, they will make sure that to the extent feasible, when they put the infrastructure back in place, it has safe facilities for all different types of users. So not just for drivers, but also for people walking and biking and riding the bus. And so on.

And so that should be happening in those cities. And we still have our arguments now and then, but they certainly are adding some things. I can think of a few prominent examples in Arcata a couple of years ago with a repaved part of H Street. And as part of that project, a longtime bicyclist in Arcata may remember that there was a block on H Street where the bike lane just kind of disappeared into the parking lane. And we were able to get that changed because they were repaving the street and they made a real bike lane there. And so that's a seemingly minor thing, really cheap to do, but just made that stretch of street so much safer for bicyclists. So those kinds of things that just add mostly paint, but maybe sometimes plastic equipment that's cheap to do, but can make a big difference when you're already doing a project.

WHEELER:

So I am a Eureka resident and I've noticed that in Eureka there are new crosswalks coming up. I was wondering what was going to happen because for a number of weeks they had been spray painted onto the road but now I see that work is actually being done to to paint them onto the road. Can you tell me a little bit more about what's going on here in Eureka?

FISKE:

Yeah, and I think you're talking about Fourth and Fifth streets, and that is Caltrans Road. It's part of State Highway 101, US 101. And so Caltrans has a program that's been around for a couple of years now that allows them to spend small amounts of money on the kinds of things that we were just talking about, crosswalk upgrades, bike lanes, maybe signage, painting on the street, mostly painting, but also some other things like beacons, the pedestrian beacons that you could press to get some flashing lights when you cross the street, those kinds of things, relatively inexpensive that they can add to other projects that are already happening. And so what's happening on fourth and fifth streets is there's a maintenance project that was already scheduled, and the folks at Caltrans were able to add, spend some of this money from this new program that they have to add some additional improvements there.

And as I understand it, that will include a number of new crosswalks, like you mentioned, which will be a really big improvement. There are a lot of places where crosswalks are only painted on one or two legs of the intersection, which gives the impression that people are not going to walk on the other legs of the intersection, even though they absolutely will, and it is legal to do so. So painting it and making it obvious to drivers and making it high visibility is a really important safety measure. And I believe they will even be adding a couple of flashing beacons also, and a few other low-cost improvements as part of this project. So that's certainly a lot more needs to be done in that corridor, but this is a good and inexpensive way to start.

WHEELER:

So with something like repainting and painting on a crosswalk, I have seen online criticism that, well, this is just painted. The fundamental issue is that people are jumping into the road and this isn't going to do much to reduce collisions. I feel like this has to be wrong, though. I, at least as a pedestrian, feel as if I am better seen in a crosswalk. So what sort of data do we have about the role simply of paint or these slow effort fixes to improve the visibility or to alert drivers to the presence, or potential presence, of pedestrians?

FISKE:

Yeah, so high visibility crosswalks, as they're known, which is basically, it's a lot of different potential designs, but it's something where there's more paint than just two parallel lines. Sometimes they are sort of that ladder style, or sometimes they have diagonal lines. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, more visible. And so there is data on that that shows that drivers are significantly more likely to yield to pedestrians when you have a high visibility crosswalk. So that does make a difference. We also know that when you have things like a raised vertical element, even if it's just a cheap little plastic bollard or a plastic reflector or delineator, that also causes drivers to slow down. And so that makes things safer and also makes them more likely to yield.

And so I do want to emphasize that paint and plastic does not solve every problem. It can't stop a speeding car. It can't provide that real physical protection that we need in a lot of places. But that said, if we can do something like that today, and maybe in five or 10 years, we can do more permanent improvements. But in that period of time that we're waiting to get those better, more perfect improvements, we will probably have saved some lives. And so I think that that is really important to take those opportunities. I also just want to take the opportunity now to say, because you mentioned the jumping out into traffic meme that we see around, and it's really important, I think, to know that while there may be very rare occasions when a person has mental health problems and is actually trying to cause harm to themselves, that is not most of what is happening when people are getting hit by drivers. And I think there are a couple of things that we have to think about in terms of the experience of the driver who may experience it a certain way.

One thing is that we know that if a driver is not looking for a pedestrian or a bicyclist, if their mindset is on a car because they're in a street and they think that's a space for cars, that often they just won't process when a bicyclist or pedestrian is present. And that's a psychological phenomenon that's not just true for drivers. That's been shown in a lot of other areas as well. But another thing that is specific to driving is that the faster a vehicle is going, the narrower the driver's field of view becomes.

Essentially, more information is coming at you too fast, and you can't process things in your peripheral vision when you're going faster. And so that means that you may literally not see somebody who is trying to cross the street until they're right in front of you, even if they were theoretically perfectly visible, if you're going at a higher rate of speed. And you don't have to be going all that fast for that to happen. So causing traffic to slow down also increases the ability of drivers to see pedestrians, bicyclists, even other motorists trying to cross the street. And I think that can prevent a lot of those collisions from happening in the first place.

WHEELER:

Yeah, absolutely. He came out of nowhere ideas. It might be subjectively true to that driver, they did not see the person, but it does not mean that the person literally came out of nowhere, right? It's that the driver probably wasn't attuned to look for that person. So having things like these crosswalks are good visual cues. I'm particularly happy, and I'll thank Caltrans here, as somebody who often walks to and from the Eureka Co-op to my house, I was always bothered that there would only be a crosswalk on one side of the street, which Caltrans was trying to encourage people to cross on that side so that drivers, when they're making a turn onto a one-way street, they would see you as they're looking for traffic. But it ignores just the fundamental problem of being on foot, which is I'm not going to keep zigging, zagging back and forth across the street as I cross four different one ways of traffic, as I go from my house in Eureka towards the waterfront.

FISKE:

Not only that, but it's less safe for you to cross three legs of an intersection when you only have to cross one. So I think you're right, there was an idea behind that. I think that's pretty much been debunked at this point. So we're really grateful to see those new crosswalks being painted.

WHEELER:

And I even see a crosswalk being repainted that was once painted and then Caltrans removed it because they didn't think it was safe. Now it's coming back by that S-turn in Eureka. So I feel vindicated because I always thought that that was a good crosswalk and I was pissed when it was removed. So thank you, Caltrans, I guess, I guess.

FISKE:

I mean, fixing their mistakes, that's something to be appreciated for, I think.

WHEELER:

You are listening to the Econews Report. Joining me is my friend, Colin Fiske, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. A lot of CRTP's work looks at the big picture. How can we create communities that are healthy for their inhabitants, where we are encouraged to use active transportation, things like walking, biking, scooting, so on. So we have we've talked about complete streets. We've talked about how Caltrans can add safety improvements to other ongoing projects without having to reopen CEQA or reopen environmental documents or project planning documents. Then there's another discrete set of projects called quick build projects, which are, I think, what they sound. Do you want to talk to us about quick builds?

FISKE:

Yeah, so a quick build is it's a concept that's actually been around for a while, but we haven't yet seen any of them really here in Humboldt or on the north coast. It's essentially the idea that like we're talking about adding complete streets features to other projects where you just use low cost things that can be implemented quickly. So paint and plastic, but also maybe planters or light fixtures or just anything that typically that doesn't involve having to pave more asphalt or do any concrete type work, which is typically more expensive and takes longer. So it's doing those kinds of projects, but doing them on their own independently and doing them in a way where it might take six months to put up a bike lane or to insert some protective bollards for a bike lane or paint a crosswalk or things like that, instead of wrapping into some big, huge project that takes years or even decades to complete.

And again, just like with the other projects we're talking about, you can't solve every problem this way, but it can make a huge difference. And I think there are even things that a lot of people don't realize that are available that you can do in this quick build manner. So for example, you can buy raised crosswalks or speed humps that are just made, pre-made, prefabricated, and the city or Caltrans or the county can just pick it up and basically bolt it to the asphalt. And there you have a raised crosswalk or a speed hump. You can buy similarly pre-made curb ramps. So if you have a place where it's not accessible to a person in a wheelchair or a person pushing a stroller, and it's going to take a while to do that concrete work, you could buy one of these rubberized plastic curb ramps and just bolt it into place for the time being. So there are really a lot of cool options out there for this that can be done quickly and at low cost.

And CRTP actually recently published an online toolkit to talk about the whole quick build process and what materials and techniques are available and how you would go through this process. It's on our website at transportationpriorities.org slash quick build. And it's written in a way that I think anybody can follow along and understand and get inspired. So I encourage people to check that out.

WHEELER:

So this is not necessarily a quick build project, but I think that it fits within the theme of pedestrian improvements. Want to talk a little bit about the South Broadway project because I think that that is underway and it's being worked on, and that's going to present a really significant improvement for pedestrians in that part of Eureka.

FISKE:

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I would say that's almost the opposite of a quick build project.

WHEELER:

And perhaps it speaks to the need of quick build projects, because the things that they're doing are kind of common sense, and many of them could have been implemented individually or separately as a quick build project, but instead it's been lumped together into this comprehensive plan.

FISKE:

Yeah, that's true. And I am very excited about this project. This is something that CRTP and others have been advocating for for years. I would say this project took shape about maybe five years ago or so and is being built right now. And in terms of like a Caltrans timeline or really a transportation infrastructure timeline in general, that's considered to be really quick. But you're totally right. It's it would have been feasible to do a lot of it, not all of it, but a lot of the this paint and plastic parts of it could have been theoretically done really much quicker than that.

But in any case, it's happening. It's really exciting. This is the part of Broadway that is south of the Bayshore Mall down to Herrick Avenue. They're going to be protected bike lanes for that length. There is a new protected intersection, which will be the first protected intersection in the whole county. And this is where there are raised islands at the corners behind which bicyclists can wait for their traffic signal. So you don't have to merge into traffic to make a left hand turn. You can stay in the bike lane, make a two stage turn and in the middle of it, wait behind your protected barrier. So you're never really exposed to traffic. So that's a super cool thing to see.

Also, new mid-block pedestrian crossings, some sidewalk improvements, street trees and traffic calming. So really a lot of really cool stuff going on there. It's really exciting to see that. And now we are continuing to push for making sure that the rest of Broadway gets gets the makeover that it needs. So that's not just an isolated stretch there.

WHEELER:

Broadway being one of the most dangerous roads in Northern California. So quick builds, they probably are often inspired by unfortunately some sort of a collision, a pedestrian or bicyclist or a car accident that causes an agency, a jurisdiction to go, oh my God, this is not performing well. And we've had an unfortunate collision consequence and we should try to rectify this problem. But that doesn't have to be the way that we do it, right? We don't have to wait for carnage to make our roads safer.

One thing you said already is that multiple jurisdictions in Humboldt County have complete streets policy. So just as you are working on your streets, you have a general direction to improve them, but that might also not be enough. So I'm slowly working to tee up the street story program. And the street story program is one where you can report where you don't feel safe. So it might be that people are not getting into, there aren't collisions or aren't incidents because people aren't there because they just don't feel safe using the roads. Or maybe there was some sort of an incident but it was never captured into the data recording systems that often drive street infrastructure funding decisions. Street story offers a different route.

So talk to me about street story and how people can submit their own reports on intersections or areas where they feel unsafe.

FISKE:

Yeah, so Street Story is a platform that we've been using for a long time now, about five or six years here in Humboldt County. It was developed by a team at UC Berkeley and so you can find it online at streetstory.berkeley.edu and basically you can just -- anybody who wants to can make a report of a place that they think is hazardous on the street or a place where they've experienced a near miss or a collision.

You can also report a place that you think is safe if you want to report what you think is a good example for other places to follow and basically there's just a number of questions about what you're reporting that you answer and then if you want to you can provide some freeform narrative to just talk about what happened or what you're worried about in that particular location. And we have, if I recall, about 1,500 reports in Humboldt County so far and we use those when we are advocating for safety improvements but also local jurisdictions, the cities, the county Caltrans review Street Story reports when they're making plans or working on projects to get that additional public input from people who use those streets and roads, and so it is important for people to make those reports there so that we have the data. The more people that are using it the more representative it is of people's experience as a whole.

So encourage people to do that anytime they feel that a location is hazardous or anytime they have an incident that is that is scary or they actually get into a collision to report it there. Of course if you if you are in a collision this isn't a substitute for reporting it to the police but it's sort of a supplement to that data source. And I will say that in terms of quick build we now have two projects that I'm aware of in Humboldt County that are coming up that are quick build projects and both of those I know have reviewed Street Story reports at various points in the planning process, but I think that they're good they're examples of two different ways that a quick build project might get started.

These would be the first two quick build projects in our region that I'm aware of, and so the first one is Hiller Road in McKinleyville and that project is on its way -- we're expecting that to be constructed in the next month or so I think -- and that will involve adding some protected bike lanes on Hiller with some plastic bollards or delineators to protect them there will be some traffic calming along Hiller Road. And there will be a quick build style of a roundabout at the intersection of McKinleyville Avenue, which has been a problematic intersection for a long time. For those who use it they know it's just huge and people sometimes don't know how to navigate it, especially if you're walking or biking or rolling.

So that project is happening that will also include really exciting public art as part of that which is a cool thing you can do with quick build -- again paint is cheap and even paying an artist is cheap compared to building a sidewalk or a street and so there will be art painted in those bike lane buffers and in those corner areas of the intersections and other spots. So it should be like a really fun community thing that also provides safer access in that area for for bikes and pedestrians and that came out of the McKinleyville Town Center process and the McKinleyville Municipal Advisory Committee knowing that the streets in the future town center need to be more human scale and more friendly and more attractive and more safe for people outside of a vehicle. And Hiller was one of those streets that was targeted and so this just lent itself to a relatively easy and quick thing that could be that could be done.

And again there are street story reports that talk about people being worried about their experiences on Hiller feeling it unsafe but actually Hiller doesn't have like a huge record of serious collisions in recent years, so this is an example of it coming more out of this community process of planning.

Whereas the other example that I'll mention is in Arcata and that's on 11th Street and possibly also K Street -- I haven't heard the latest details -- but these are areas where there have been a lot of near misses and crashes a lot of street story reports and people actually through the gateway planning process that happened over the last few years this is something where CRTP and other people really engaged to say these are the dangerous streets in this part of the city, K Street and 11th street, people drive fast, it's not safe to walk and bike, you need to do something there, and as as of the last I heard the city is planning to make some fairly significant traffic calming improvements on at least 11th Street that would be in this quick build style, so with paint and plastic possibly even some of those raised crosswalks that can just be slapped down and bolted down. So it'd be really cool to see that. I haven't seen the latest plans or the timeline but I've been hearing about it for a while and it's supposed to happen quick so so we'll hope to see it soon

WHEELER:

All right. Well, we are almost out of time, but I had a thought of a change that was made. It wasn't quite a quick build because it was easier than that. And I think it was because of Street Story, which is if you look at the Street Story map for Eureka, a lot of people will talk about how drivers may not see you in a crosswalk and to improve the visibility of pedestrians in crosswalks. In Eureka, we now have leading pedestrian intervals. So the crosswalk will shine walk for pedestrians before the light will turn green for cars so that you can get out into the intersection and be in a more visible position so that you are less likely to be hit by a turning car. I think that that's really fantastic. And that was a fix that took zero dollars and zero cents to make. It just took an engineer going and playing with the settings on a light box.

FISKE:

Yeah, and I will say I'm pleased to report that those leading pedestrian intervals are now actually required on state highways by state law, so we should be seeing even more of those, at least on the state highways, and they do have a proven safety track record, so that's a really cool, cheap, easy thing that you can do.

WHEELER:

All right, well, as I said, unfortunately, we're out of time, but I want to encourage people to go to CRTP's website, Colin, what's that?

FISKE:

transportationpriorities.org and then the quick build toolkit is just slash quick build or you can find it by navigating the website.

WHEELER:

And if you want to do a Street Story, streetstory.berkeley.edu, or just do Street Story into Google. It'll be the first thing that pops up. All right, thank you, Colin, so much for joining the Eco News Report.

FISKE:

Thanks, Tom.

WHEELER:

And thank you listeners. Join us again on this time and channel next week for another episode of the Econews Report.