Opinion: “Right-sizing,”crashes and growth


I just received a copy of a draft “Safety Analysis” report that the Boulder city government prepared in May. It analyzes the accidents that occurred during 2012-2014 on Folsom, Iris, 55th, and 63rd Streets — the streets that were up for “right sizing”— and the potential for avoiding crashes by altering the street layout, which the report calls “correctible” crashes.
An observation (that also applies to the Housing Boulder debacle earlier this year) is that when there is insufficient information and analysis, the discussion quickly degenerates into an “I’m right and you’re wrong” food fight of little benefit to anyone. So, given the focus on auto safety, as well as that of bike-riders and pedestrians, this “Safety Analysis” absolutely should have been completed and disseminated prior to the council’s single decision meeting.
On Folsom, which had the most crashes by far, the total number of potentially “correctible” crashes during 2012-2014 was 16 out of 242 total crashes (6.6 percent), or only about five each year. But because each of the various “right-sizing” designs only addresses some of the correctible accident locations, only seven to nine crashes were actually “correctible” for those three years (2.9 percent to 3.7 percent of the total), or only two to three per year. So even with “right-sizing,” 96 percent to 97 percent of the crashes on Folsom will likely still occur.
The memo is correctly ambiguous as to whether speed reduction will help or not. If speed is reduced because the one lane of traffic is mostly bumper to bumper, then there are more rear-end collisions, crossing or turning into traffic is more risky, and delayed motorists run more red lights, all of which could lead to more accidents. But other forms of accidents may be reduced. There was no segregated data on pedestrian and bike “correctible” crashes, an unfortunate oversight.
“Right-sizing” could work in appropriate locations, but it is sensitive to traffic levels. So the plan to experiment on Folsom this summer when CU is not in full session is not going to clarify matters.
As for pedestrians, signalized crossings done right can make crossing much safer. The city’s current signals should be rebuilt so that the lights indicate which way people are crossing and where they are in the crossing process. They are stupidly dangerous now, because they provide essentially no information to the drivers other than that someone pushed the button sometime on one side or the other, so drivers sometimes disregard them. When someone gets seriously hurt or killed, everyone will wonder why these signals didn’t get fixed.
To look at the process more generally, the staff work was incomplete. You can’t do an experiment without good baseline data, a specified, quantitative evaluation process, and an exhaustive look at the implications and alternatives. And I’m still unclear as to whether any of the tree-filled medians on Folsom will be removed in the final plan.
Neither the Transportation Advisory Board nor the Council Agenda Committee did their jobs. The TAB is supposed to be advisory, not just advocacy. And the CAC is not simply a scheduling entity for whatever the staff has generated. They are both supposed to ensure that complete and unbiased analyses are done, so that the council debate and public discussion is based on full information. When meeting material is not complete or accurate, the CAC or council should send it back for further work. But the citizens ended up doing most of the critiques, because many council members seem unwilling to say anything that might be seen as negative or critical.
The biggest failure was to only evaluate the “right-sizing” traffic flows based on current conditions. We don’t know if Boulder will add 1,000 more jobs, 10,000 more, or 100,000 more (the last real build-out evaluation projected the potential for over 114,000 more jobs,) and future residential growth is equally uncertain. All this growth could cause large increases in traffic, making all the current “right-sizing” analyses irrelevant. If last September the council majority had not rejected Councilman Sam Weaver’s far-reaching effort to evaluate future growth and replaced it with Macon Cowles’ and Tim Plass’s watered-down motion, by now we would have a lot better numbers to work with.
It’s simply impossible to make “right-sizing” decisions of any sort, or get useful input from citizens, if we don’t have any idea what the “size” is, i.e. how many people will be here. It’s past time that council members focus on resolving the big growth questions of “how much, what kind, and who pays for the impacts.”


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