Ep. 102 Talking About a Safe Systems Approach w/ Sarah Abel

[00:00:00] Sarah: I love experiencing new places by bike. The things that you see and interact with, I think are just a lot more like humanistic. So I love whenever I'm visiting cities, I love riding a bike through any city because just the way you experience the city is different.

[00:00:27] John: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the active towns podcast conversations about creating a Culture of Activity. My name is John Simmerman. I'm the founder of the Active Towns Initiative, and I'm honored to serve as your host each week on this podcast journey. Thank you so much for tuning in. It's always wonderful to have you along for the ride.

Today is Friday, December 10th, 2021. And this is episode number 1 0 2. The second episode in season three. I hope you all caught the premiere of last week's episode with professor Natalia Barbour of TU Delft in The Netherlands. If not, you'll definitely want to go back and catch it preferably on video format because it's very visual episode today.

I'm excited to share this conversation. I had last week with Sarah Abel, a transportation planner with a passion for safe systems design. We cover a lot of ground, including how a Safety Town from her childhood probably planted those initial seeds of interest. What a safe systems approach is and the need for more creative and flexible curb management strategies.

But before we roll into all of that, please allow me a brief moment to say that this episode is being brought to you by the generous contributions of our donors, sponsors and monthly patrons on our Patreon page. And I do want to send a special shout out to Ryan Hale with Laneshift in Northwest Arkansas.

I really appreciate your generous contribution and all the amazing work that you Ben and your entire team are doing to help get more people writing more often. And if you too, with light to contribute, just head over to my website activetowns.org and navigate over to the donation page, every donation, no matter how small is greatly appreciated and has a big impact on my ability to continue doing this work.

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As I strive to grow this movement, to create a Culture of Activity for All Ages and Abilities.

Okay, let's get this conversation with Sarah Abel. Rolling.

Sarah Abel. Welcome to the Active Towns Podcast.

[00:03:23] Sarah: Hey, John. Good to be joining you.

[00:03:25] John: Here we go again. So yeah we had some technical difficulties the last time with some of the graphics and some of the visuals, and since we want to do this as a very interactive and immersive thing where we're showing some pretty pictures and all that we want to wander to do this again.

So why don't we do this? Why don't we have you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe just how you got interested in this field of work.

[00:03:53] Sarah: Yeah, definitely. I have an architecture and planning background. I have done everything from working for nonprofits to public agencies to consultants and became uh, expert in complete streets, work, building green and complete streets and rural areas.
It's how I got into transportation, but I'm also a general land use planner. And most recently I just departed the Institute of transportation engineers as the transportation planning director. And I'm in the process of joining Toole Design is the Safe, Sustainable Safety Practices Lead..

[00:04:30] John: Very cool.
Excellent. So I'm going to pull up a photo here, and this is a photo from your past that you have shared with me. And what's funny is the first image that I get when I think about this is I think of a storage unit location. Do you know what I mean? let's pull this up because storage unit it's like totally, it's like totally not the highest and best use of it.

This is what I mean. So what are we looking at?

[00:05:05] Sarah: Yeah, definitely so long before I went to architecture and planning school I am the daughter of a first responder. And this is a miniature town known as Safety Town. A lot of first responders help train kids on the basic rules of the road, how to safely cross the street.
What stop signs are for how to stop at a stop sign. So this is a Safety Town. It's a miniature town where kids bring their bikes, skateboards walk rollerblades and they learn the rules of the road. And I shared this with you because I think that this was actually the origin of me being interested in the built environment and in transportation.

In general. So as a young kindergartener, I attended Safety Town. And I loved it that both the architecture and the street and learning the rules of the road. And then later on like around middle school, I would go back and help volunteer with my dad who was a firefighter to teach kids that were younger than me.

The rules of the road and Safety Town and fun facts since my dad was a firefighter, a couple of these buildings to teach kids how to safely get out of a structure in the event of a fire, the fire department lights, a couple of these buildings on fire. not literally, but figuratively to teach kids, stop, drop, and roll.

As well as how to find a door by padding things, how to know as a door is hot or cold, so it's safe to exit. So it's all things safety. And yeah, this is the origin of where I think I like started thinking about the built environment, the way that I did the way that I do.

[00:06:42] John: Right, right. You started thinking about that. So I zoomed out a little bit so that we could get a little bit more of the scale and the scope of the streetscape here. And you can see that it's in miniature. So it's like when the kids are out there learning how to cross the street at the sidewalk and they're on their bikes in the street and they're doing that.
I've always been curious about these types of Safety Town projects. And some of them are, do they go by other names like Safety Gardens

[00:07:12] Sarah: Traffic Gardens safety gardens? Yeah. There's kind of two organizations, one out here in DC, which is traffic gardens. And then safety town is more Midwestern based.
I think they're a nonprofit organization based out of Ohio, I believe.

[00:07:27] John: Okay. So here's my thought that it was always curious to me that. There was the scope of them were always so incredibly auto centric.

[00:07:41] Sarah: Yeah, it's so funny. Looking at this now as a trained professional working in Vision Zero and safe system, obviously this starts to teach kids traffic control devices, but it's as though you're a kid on a bike who really is a car or not teaching necessarily kids how to bike safely on a street, which is of course very important.

I look at this and like it's the crosswalks, I would want to change them to a high visibility crosswalk so that we start to teach kids that become adults like the safest way for streets to look. Also from the architecture standpoint, obviously this is a miniature suburbia, so to teach more of an urban environment.

But I still think that the concepts as a child that are very Basic can translate across the board. I will say that even though this is autocentric kids learn how to look both ways before crossing the street, and they understand the interaction of a pedestrian versus car and how that is taught.

I also think that this is just like a creative way for kids to understand the built environment. I've seen some of the newer traffic gardens like in DC that have murals painted in the playground area. I like this one and this is of course the one that I went to as a kid in Illinois. But at least this one's like a gridded street.

Some of the traffic gardens, like meandering. Streets more like suburbia, so grid versus non grid and teaching kids that, but I've also worked on safe routes to schools, programs which require a community engagement and interaction with the children about streets. And I've built these temporarily out of like bike boxes and refrigerator boxes, let kids build their building and then teach them the rules of the road.

So yeah, there's a lot of creative ways to do this, to show the good and the bad, the autocentric versus the vulnerable road, user lens.

[00:09:38] John: Yeah. One of the things that we see quite frequently when we visit the Netherlands is the students and the kids out there in their environment.

Learning and figuring out how to get around. And it's both with their parents as well as part of the school curriculum. By the time they're 12 years old, they actually have to pass an exam that says that they know how to navigate through their community by bike and be able to get around.

And what's interesting about that is that when you have a safe systems approach, like the Dutch have, they're learning it on really appropriate and highly safe.

[00:10:22] Sarah: Because it's safe for them to do yeah. You hit the nail on the head. It's not unsafe to send your child out in traffic. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

And if you think about it, the Dutch and if we design, we know, and we have data that if we design roads for the most vulnerable road users, we're making it safe for everybody, including those that are driving a car. And same goes true for if we think about designing for all ages and abilities.

So the kids and the elderly thinking about signal, timing, it takes longer for kids and elderly persons to get across the street. So why do we time signals Assuming that people are able body, because then we're leaving people behind physically and metaphorically in a crosswalk. Yeah. Who may need more time to get across the street.

And obviously it may slow things down, but like we're making things safer. And when we say slowing things down, thinking about the concept of time everybody's always in a rush to get places, but going two miles above a speed limit, two miles per hour, right in the us. If you're like, we know that most drives, most distances are short.

Just thinking about how much time are you actually saving by speeding by putting people's lives at risk? I think that how we communicate those things are really important. I love this photo. My face like. So annoyed cause I was pushing a friend of mine across the street, actually in DC, this photos probably about 10 years old now I'm dating myself.

But yeah, so I think just thinking about how people get across this. Safely, reducing kinetic energy forces, making sure those that are most vulnerable, if they were to get struck, making sure that it's not going to result in a fatality. All those concepts actually make the whole system safer for everybody, rather than making it faster for just cars.

So hope to see that shift in our profession.

[00:12:22] John: Yeah. absolutely. Why don't you give the backstory on this particular photo?

[00:12:26] Sarah: Yeah, definitely. I actually, as I mentioned, have a degree in architecture and very early on in my architecture student career, I got involved in a group called the American Institute of architecture students.

And it's still an organization that I stay involved in. And it's how I became a leader. In any profession that I've ever been involved in. But while I was on that board of directors as a student, we started a program called Freedom By Design. And it was mostly teaching architecture students how to think about building codes, cause you're really not taught that in architecture school, but then it also those architecture students went out into the real world.
They found a client, so they had to learn budgets as well as codes. And they had to work with an actual client to get a product. Built it included mostly architecture related things. Things like making bathroom handicap accessible, making a kitchen, handicap, accessible, building a ramp to a structure, and the clients didn't have the means themself to make their home more accessible.

So the chapters would raise funds, but the leaders of the Freedom by Design Chapters at every architecture school, across the country, we would bring them out to DC every year. And give them the leader provide leadership training, but then also the basics of how to run a freedom by design chapter.

And we also do a monument walk out here in DC and we do noise canceling headphones blind folds and wheelchairs, so that the students who are going to be doing these freedom by design projects, they understand what it is, what it feels like to navigate the built environment with those disabilities being deaf, being blind, being in a wheelchair.

And what's interesting, even though they're focused on interior or building related items, we have them cross streets. So they understand the purpose of the tactile warning strip. The purpose of what height pedestrian push button should be at now, why it should be in recall How much time it takes to cross the street.

And also one of the most important things with ADA accessible ramps is we do the monuments in a wheelchair so that they understand the reason why an ADA ramp should be the two ten slope than it is and not any greater cause. An interesting fact is the national park service does not have to adhere to ADA guidelines.

So a lot of the ramps around the monuments in Washington, DC are not ADA accessible.
[00:14:55] John: Wow. Yeah. That's really shocking. Yeah. And it's so powerful to be able to give architecture students this opportunity to be able to experience it, but also being able to get other people that ability to see and feel what it's like to be out there.

In our public realm and on our streets and experiencing that. And this next shot is just that it's somebody is experiencing it. And so what's the backstory on this and who's this.

[00:15:29] Sarah: Yeah. I mentioned that I've worked in non-profit in public agency and in consulting.

And while I was running a community design program within a land trust on Maryland Eastern shore that's really where I professionally got involved in green and complete streets. So this is a project in Cambridge, Maryland, where we built the first screen and complete street, actually in a rural town in Maryland.

And this is a city council member from that city. And we went through a process of teaching everybody in the community, including the elected officials, the benefits of complete streets, but instead of telling them the benefits we showed them, the benefits. So we started by doing community input boards, all across town to hear what they wanted.

And the project was called Cambridge gateways, what they wanted their gateway to be like. We went in front of city council and I'll never forget all of the city council members were like, what is a bike sharrow? And we told them what it was from a transportation planner's perspective, but we knew that we had to show them.

And this concept of if you build it, they will come is something that I found helpful in incrementally moving the needle with new types of planning and transportation treatments on projects. So we actually worked with 3m on this project and we at first put down temporary bike sharrows those are the ones that wear off over time.

And they're meant to be used in like construction zones. We put those down we trained the public works department, how to properly install bike sharrows to the manual on uniform traffic control devices, the MUTCD. But then we also left it down for three months and we showed the city that if you have this infrastructure, people start to use it.

And then this was actually a green in complete street green, meaning the storm water infrastructure. But then we also did permanent bike lanes that had the green backing on the bike symbol. In order to make the bike lane more visible at intersections, we did not do the full green pavement marking down the entire bike lane because the vehicles are put on this street was not high enough, but we wanted to make a high visibility since this was really the first bike lane in town.

Yeah, this, we did a ribbon cutting a lot of kids. First responders, people that lived on this street came out because we moved, we did the project with them. For them or at them. So we did a ribbon cutting to celebrate the fact that it actually was done. And we did a bike ride. It was a quarter mile segment, so not very long, but we did a bike ride.

And then we did a ribbon cutting. You can see very diverse representation in the ribbon cutting. And we really just tried to make it the community's project versus a project being done in the community. And I'm pleased to report that this complete street is still in place. And now they have a whole bike network in the city of Cambridge and a fun fact about the city of Cambridge, Maryland.

They actually host a full Ironman yearly. So it's become a bike gang and active transportation community. And this is the main road that you use to enter the town.

[00:18:40] John: Yeah, I see what you mean too, about the number of kids that showed up for the ribbon cutting

[00:18:44] Sarah: Trying to hunt down those big scissors that are in the mayor's hand.
That was one of the funnest tasks ever is trying to find giant scissors.

[00:18:53] John: Yeah, that's good. And I had to move your photo too, because your, you were blocking some of the kids. And I was like nah, we got to move. You got to love technology when it actually works. This is good. All right. So in this project was some time ago, right?

[00:19:08] Sarah: Yeah, this was, oh man. Like seven years ago, seven, eight years ago.

[00:19:14] John: Okay. And the relevance of that project in, in that location it was pretty significant, like you said, there the community itself is going through an evolution of sorts. You had mentioned the fact that, yes, there's an Ironman there.

And so there's an increase in the number of people I believe that yeah, this particular article that you shared with me is from 2019. And it talks a little bit more about the fact that after what was it maybe seven years or I guess it was 2012, 2014 when it originally went in and talk a little bit about that relevance of that.

[00:19:55] Sarah: Yeah, definitely. When I was preparing for this podcast, trying to figure out what to send to you, to give us food for thought and things to talk about. I found this article from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation that was tracking this project after its implementation and the impact that it had on the community.

So I stumbled on this to find that so many years later, they were still talking about how this initial project in the community really was instrumental in moving things. forward across the entire community and that now on every street they think about the environmental impact of streets in that community.

You can't see it well in the photos that I sent you. But there's obviously bio retention facilities, which the community helps plant clean up maintain every year. There's also, and I think there's a close-up photo of there's permeable, concrete. There's permeable.

The sidewalks and then there's a pavers in the parked car lane just to designate the different treatments for the different uses, but then also it has environmental benefits. There's a filter on the parked car lane, so that oil and and other toxic materials from vehicles don't seep into the bay.

Yeah, so there's a lot of environmental treatments that we also try to use the different treatments to inter indicate the different uses. So it's a multifaceted approach. So it was funny to see that so many years later, like 2013 to 2019 or 2012 to 2019, that they're still talking about this project as having been instrumental and as a planner, that's so rewarding to see that the projects that you're doing are transforming communities.

And like I said, if you bring a community along, They're going to understand the changes better than you just telling them about the benefits and the changes. And then they also feel ownership towards their project. I think that's why even to today the community helps clean up trash from the bioretention facilities or plant new plants in the springtime and things like that.
So it just makes for a better place for everyone.

[00:21:56] John: Right. Yeah. That's a good point. A lot of the work that you've been doing more recently has been focused more on safe systems. Talk a little bit about that work and some of the things that you're passionate about.

[00:22:10] Sarah: Yeah, definitely. So as vision zero has been a focus in the United States for some time.

However, unfortunately in many places we have not seen an actual decrease in fatalities, even though many agencies many jurisdictions have passed resolutions in hopes of eliminating traffic fatalities by 2030, 2050, whatever the year is that they they have set forth.

And with the safe system approach we've learned from other countries, Australia, New Zealand Norway, the Netherlands the safe system approach is how those countries successfully got to zero or reduced fatalities. So the safe system approach has five elements that have to be all thought about together.

So you can see the safe system wheel. We don't like to think of those as principles because you have to think about safe road. The safe vehicles, safe speeds, safe roads, and post-crash care altogether systemically rather than thinking about like just safe vehicles or just safe speeds. Or just certain road users.

And then the principles I think are what are. Critical to shifting the way we think about transportation projects to prioritize safety. That no matter who you are, whether you're a engineer, a planner a road user that death and serious injury should not be accepted on our roadways. In the U S we know that transportation fatalities are an epidemic in our country, but it seems to still be accepted.

Even though we see over 36,000 deaths a year on our roads we know that humans make mistakes, but that mistake should not result in a fatality. So reducing kinetic energy forces so that if a crash does happen, it doesn't result in a fatality. And thinking about kinetic energy forces for the most vulnerable road user that is using the roadway.

So that like in the case of say a pedestrian, we know what speed at which a pedestrian is at risk for serious and fatal injury. So if there's a lot of pedestrians present or even one we shouldn't be having cars drive over that speed that is safe for the most vulnerable road user. And so those principles, I encourage everybody to take a look at them because it articulates how we should be thinking about our transportation system differently, both as designers of the transportation system, which is the most critical as well as a user of the system.

Yeah. This graphic is from a AAA study. That measure did the impact. That speeds have on pedestrians because they're the most vulnerable road user. When I say vulnerable road user they're not protected by a car they're not protected by steel. So they're at higher risk of getting killed in a traffic crash.

So we know the survivability we also know that the higher, the speed, the longer the braking distance for a car, the longer, the reaction time before you even hit that brake. Man, we're in sync on this time, John, you know exactly where I'm going next and have them up. I love this. So yeah, taking all those things into consideration, we have to think about how we're designing the system for safety first and then mobility.

Because the reduction in mobility is actually not that impactful, but the increase in safety can have huge dividends in saving people's lives.

[00:25:29] John: Yeah. One of the most tragic things that we have seen as our speeds or motor vehicle speeds have crept up is just the fact that we are seeing that shifting of impact towards the more vulnerable roadway users and street users.

It's getting safer and safer inside the motor vehicle and less safe outside of the motor vehicle. And so as those speeds go up and the previous graph showed that, yes, exactly. The cars are getting much bigger too. And so you're, again, you're getting there, but here's a factor that as the speeds creep up, The ability of the driver to be able to avoid a crash is a critical thing.
So not only is it the re reaction difference, but it's also the field of vision difference. And so we have this field of vision thing.

[00:26:19] Sarah: It's interesting about field of vision and us as planners and designers of the transportation system is we know that field of vision changes as speed increases, which is what this graphic is showing.

But then we also know that if you narrow a driver's field of vision. They will slow down this concept of target speed, which is getting people to drive the speed. We want them to go and not any faster than the posted speed limit and the posted speed limit should be that is safest for all road users that are using that road segment or the system.

And the thing to think about is narrower travel lanes are really critical to get getting people, to drive the speed that is safe to go for all road users. And I'll go back to another thing with the safe system approach, which is kinetic energy forces which is what all of this thinking about kinetic energy forces is connected to, but if you have vulnerable road users present, it's not necessarily just about speed because we know that we have roads like arterials.

Have a higher speed and they're not ever going to be able to be 20 miles per hour. We have road classifications worldwide. But if you have to have a car go in a higher speed and we know the speed at which a person in a bike lane or a pedestrian is vulnerable to getting killed.

We need to separate those users in space and time so that if a crash does occur, it doesn't result in a fatality. I would use the comparison of in Europe you see, bollards. Right everywhere. You don't see flex posts flex posts a delineator, like what we use in the US. We don't want the car to have damage, but that delineator is not going to stop a car from hitting a pedestrian on a sidewalk, a bicyclist in a bike lane.

So thinking about those barriers that are actually going to separate users in space, if a crash does occur. So it goes back to that humans make mistakes or redundancy is critical. So then if a crashed does occur. It doesn't result in a fatality. So that's like the lens at which we should be thinking about these things.

And it's so funny going all the way back to Safety Town at the start of our conversation. I now look at safety town very differently.

[00:28:37] John: Yeah. And one of the things that, that I think there's an opportunity to actually create Safety Towns that are also projecting out.

what we'd like to see in terms of infrastructure and teaching, not only kids, but also adults What proper infrastructure could end up looking like, What better way than to, transform a Safety Town into we're going to have a continuous elevation sidewalk, here crossing here and oh, by the way, we're going to have protected and separated bike infrastructure in here. And exactly.

[00:29:14] Sarah: There's a signal further down in the safety town, I don't think you can see it.
I was just walking with a friend of mine on a street and there was a leading pedestrian interval in the signal timing again, separating users and time. And even though the pedestrian signal heads said walk and there was a countdown she has a road user was like, no. Traffic signal hasn't changed to green yet we can't go. And I was like, no, that's a leading pedestrian interval. It gets the pedestrian into the crosswalk before the car started. And it was so funny, like walking with someone who isn't in transportation system, thinking about how we articulate these new things, so that going back to the bike lane story and Cambridge, Maryland, so that road users understand it like in the us, we don't retrain drivers to get their driver's license renewed.
And I think that has a lot to do with it. Like I know that our industry talks about Hawks or, and things like that. Like how do we expect a driver to understand that? How do we expect the industry to understand that if we're introducing this new traffic control devices? So man, we need to redesign a Safety Town together, John.

[00:30:20] John: It just, it seems to me that it's it would not only. Help behoove and train the next generation for the infrastructure that we're going to be building out over the next 10 to 15 to 20 to 30 years because it's going to happen. It takes time, but we're going to have it. And the great advantage that the Dutch children and the children who, you know, who grew up in, in Sweden and also in Copenhagen have, is they're actually training out there in the safe systems environment that they're at.

And what better way than to, to help educate the future generations then to show them Hey, this is what's really possible. And if you build it like this, guess what? That actually changes behavior..

[00:31:05] Sarah: Yeah, and I think we have the conduit and the potential to do so. in other ways, I mentioned safe routes to schools projects, which have honestly been some of the most rewarding projects I've ever been involved in, in my career as a planner, but then transportation alternatives.

There's a lot of paths to fund these types. Things. And I think training everyone that uses our road system how to think about these things differently. We'll see that we'll see that change and that acceptance of these kinds of new things. Like I know roundabouts everybody's oh, but I don't know how to drive through a roundabout and things like that.

I think that if you move the needle together, there's more understanding with these new traffic control devices, because we know they work. All over the world. And we should be thinking about how to do them in the U S and like the U S isn't so different that we have to completely reinvent the wheel.

Like our traffic and troll devices might look a little different, but it's not like we have to like completely reinvent these things. We know that protected intersections, roundabouts reduce those kinetic energy forces at intersections create less conflicts think about car versus car.
You have less left turning movements, right? Turning movements on things like that with protected intersections and roundabouts. So just thinking about it through a different lens is, how we'll move the needle.

[00:32:28] John: Yeah. since you mentioned roundabouts, and I was just right on that particular slide, so I wanted to go to it.

And of course in the United States, we're starting to see more and more roundabouts, but most of the design of the roundabouts are turbo, roundabouts and high speed multilane roundabouts, and they're really infrastructure for facilitating throughput of motor vehicles versus prioritizing the safety and wellbeing of more vulnerable road users.

And that's one of our biggest challenges is shifting that mindset of what it is we're measuring in, what are the standards that we have there. And so there is a concept out there. Many of the listeners and viewers of this podcast know that there's something called LOS or level of service.
And it's something that. Engineers and planners are designing towards is we need to be able to keep that facility performing at a certain level and moving cars through. I think that we should change what LOS stands for and it should be level of safety and not Level of Service..

[00:33:28] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, definitely both level of safety.
And there's another metric that we use for bike networks, a lot called level of traffic stress. But I think the root of the problem with LOS, no matter what we call it, whatever that acronym stands for is we don't measure road users in the same way. We have measures and standards for cars.
We don't have measures or standards for other modes. And if you again, compare the us to other countries the way we measure our roads and other countries is people versus cars. So I think until we have a consistent measure for multiple modes to measure how to design the environment for all road users, and again, to understand.

The level at which if you have mode shifts, how you should be designing the road to encourage more people to walk or bike, that is just as critical as measuring the current usage. This is a photo of a roundabout in West Palm Beach. And you talked about like high throughput roundabouts.

And I think the devil is in the details. That's one of my favorite quotes from Daniel Burnham, to go all the way back to my architecture background is that. a roundabout, we know is safer, but the devil is ultimately in the details and how we design that roundabout. Like a lot of roundabouts in the U S don't have pedestrian accommodations and thinking about where that crosswalk is in relation to the vehicle approach, the yield, there being two yields.
You'll see that there's a raised crosswalk here. So all of those details are really critical to the system being safe for everyone and people understanding how. The system right now in the proposed changes to the MUTCD, there's this gray area with roundabouts, whether or not bike facilities are permitted within a roundabout.

And we know that in the Netherlands that multimodal roundabouts work, as long as again, you separate those users in space and time. So having a cycle track on the outer ring, as well as the sidewalk on the outer ring of a roundabout is really important that there's this gray area in the U S about whether or not like bike facilities are permitted in a roundabout.
And some people interpret that as no bike facilities, can't be in a roundabout. And I think we need to provide more pedestrian accommodations and roundabouts. So not just thinking about that, what you talked about at the beginning of this portion, where we pulled this up, which is thinking of.

Cars through a roundabout and these beginning people through, around about safely.

[00:35:53] John: Yeah. And it also begs the question of, especially when we start looking at our downtown streets and our more urbanized streets and our shopping streets is what is the purpose of the street? And you and I had talked about before about the Strong Towns approach of the street being the platform for the development and building of wealth and prosperity for a community it's like the street has for thousands of years has been the area where things happened.
If people came together and it's our largest public realms and it hasn't been in, in that transformation has been relatively. The last 80 to 100 years is where we've given up our streets as people given them over to motor vehicles. And so that tension of that fundamental differences of well how do we measure the success of this street? Maybe it's how beautiful it is and how productive it is and how much, how desirable it is for people to be there.

[00:36:52] Sarah: Yeah. Can we phone a friend? Can we phone a Chuck into this podcast making cookies right now? I'm here for that. As we get closer to the holidays yeah we know that people streets environments that are built for all road users, all ages, and abilities are more pleasant to live in thinking about like green streets, the more straight trees you have, they narrow the tunnel vision, which makes speeds decrease that's an easy traffic calming solution, but then who does that love, like a street with trees on it, like thinking about how people enjoy the built environment. It all comes full circle, right? If you make a safe environment for all road users, it's actually a more. Pleasant place to be.

When I was at the land trust doing community design, our Strategy or approach was that in order to keep our rural places rural with conservation easements and things like that, we had to keep those rural town centers vibrant and things like complete streets. And thinking about the interaction of building to street sidewalk, cafes multi-use buildings, things like that.
Planting trees, making green space parks making it safe, makes it just a more vibrant and pleasant place for people to be. But it takes some education and some training and some understanding to move that needle. So people like we, as people like are creatures of habit we interact with what we know.
So you have to show them how what is different is going to improve people's lives.

[00:38:33] John: Yeah. And one of the other main projects that you have been working on is curbside management and you just said one of the most important aspects is for people to be able to touch it and feel it and understand it. And of course what had happened in the last two years now with the pandemic is the many communities, many streets, especially the downtown main streets have been, re-imagining what the curbside is for and what it could be for and what is needed.

Why don't you walk us through this whole concept of curbside management and why this matters?
[00:39:11] Sarah: Yeah curbside Management is essentially like a public agency managing the curb space. And the curb is like the physical curb where you see signage and markings that indicate where things are aren't allowed.

The curbside is either side of the curb where you usually have to like end a mode store, a mode, switch a mode. So this graphic indicates the users and uses at the curb that you primarily have to think about, but this of course doesn't cover everything. Like I think of just basic stuff, bus stops fire hydrants.

How to efficiently design the curve for the highest and best use at a given time based both on demand as well as how you want to shift. Modes if you want to shift towards more active transportation, people biking, for example, you should probably think about bike storage.
We know that we've seen a lot of healthy slow streets arise during COVID-19, but then we've also seen a lot of people's streets arise outdoor dining parklets being in the curb lane. So balancing all of those things in the curb lane, and then thinking about even your sidewalk with how much space do you have between a building and that edge of curbs so that you can optimize those interactions and still make it accessible for all people to use the curbside, either side of the curb.

So that on the street side, you don't have to double parking for freight and things like that. But then on the sidewalk side, making sure that you have enough room for people. I always use the kind of micro example of sidewalk signs if you don't make the sidewalk wide enough, but then you allow sidewalk signs within your jurisdiction.
You're potentially limiting somebody in a wheelchair from safely getting through. So just thinking about all those users and uses that have to use the curbside and making sure that we accommodate for both the people that are there, as well as the people that we want to be there, or no need to be there, but don't currently have those accommodations.
So that's a very high level of curbside management.

[00:41:16] John: Yeah. And we see a whole bunch of really interesting things here. We obviously see the green infrastructure and the parklets and the streetscapes, and we see off to the side there, the food trucks and the, and obviously one of the things that has come up with the pandemic is the cafes have been.

Trying to create additional outdoor seating. And so we see some of the curbside being re-imagined as a space for commerce even. and viewing that as much more flexible is something that I think is, has been a positive that has come out of an absolutely devastating pandemic because it's given people and cities an opportunity to re-imagine what our streets are for and what that space is for that curbside space.

And we think about how parking the ability to. Affordably and cheaply, maybe free park, a personal private vehicle on a curb, more important than an active mobility, a protected and safe environment for people to, to be able to get around maybe through creativity where we re-imagine.

Okay. How do we do this? Maybe if have enough space, maybe we keep parking and make it parking, protected, active mobility facilities. And so it's just a really exciting time right now that this is all happening. I think you had mentioned to me that this development was all happening just prior to the pandemic, is that.

[00:42:46] Sarah: Yeah. So I worked on a curbside inventory guide with federal highway administration, which was actually released in July of 2021. And in the midst of the pandemic, and we didn't specifically, we did not start the project because of the pandemic, or it doesn't specifically reference the pandemic, but if you take principles at a high level and apply them based on what's going on in the world, let it be safe system or curbside management.
Like you can think about the. bigger picture which is the system with curbside management. I think one thing that's interesting with like flex zones is I think we used to think of a curbside management as allocating a certain amount of space to a use at all hours of the day, whether it be parking storage, there may be times of day that you need to have no parking on a street or half parking on a street for vehicle storage, like overnight in residential areas, for example.
But then there's other times a day where we think of it for like bus stops snow routes things like that, but we don't necessarily think about it for other uses based on the time of day. We also like in kind of the curbside management realm, we adjust. kind of parking storage for things like major events.

That's an example of flex zones that have been happening for a while within agencies get a special permit cause you're having a major event. Cause you're going to have more pickups and drop-offs, so you need like a loading zone for pickups and drop-offs, but then you also have to think about it.

You can apply that to everything that we do. And that's where flex zones come in. And curbside management is like at a given time of day, you may need more space for walking more space for biking, more space for outdoor dining rather than permanently allocating a space along the curb for a use that really only needs it at a certain time of day.

Think about freight. Usually deliveries happen at a certain time of day. So coordinating those efforts so that you're making that space available for those that need it at that given time and not allocating it and having wasted space because there's only so much right away for a space that doesn't need to use it 24 7.

Yeah. There's so much stuff happening at the curb. You don't realize it. And still you start thinking about curbside management through kind of the lens of a transportation planner.
[00:44:51] John: Yeah. This helps exemplify several different types of things, just like you were what you were saying and the adding in that additional layer or level of, okay. what about flex? What could this space be? At this time, it's easy to roll in the end of the hot dog vendor and et cetera.

So yeah. Point well taken on the beautiful opportunity to be more flexible about how that space is being used.

[00:45:19] Sarah: Yeah. Especially if we have, as we have like more uses and use as the evolution in curbside management, I think about is you had like scooters e-bikes you had you have bike share. Then you had east scooters e-bikes and you had food trucks happening at the same time.

And now you have outdoor dining spilling into the curb space, the things in response to the pandemic, more space for walking and biking. So there's been this like incremental change that the only way we're going to be able to accommodate all of those things is thinking about a use that needs it, or should need it at a given time and allocating that space hourly rather than daily or forever for an eternity

[00:45:55] John: No,

[00:45:57] Sarah: We also need to phone a friend, bring in Donald Shoup to talk about the high cost of free parking.

[00:46:02] John: Yeah and fortunately the Shoup Dawg was a guest on our podcast. And so that's a classic episode So make sure if you haven't already listened to that one go back folks and dial into that.

But yeah I do need to get him back on since we're starting to produce more video podcasts and he's got some really great animated videos, so that'd be fun to get him back on. So real quickly is there anything that we haven't discussed yet that you want to make sure we leave the audience with?

[00:46:31] Sarah: No. You talk about so much. I am also a lover of the Active Towns Podcast. I watch it. We were just talking about before we started recording the episode 1 0 1 that I'm excited to watch that actually came out today as we're recording this one. I just, yeah. There's so many things to think about and I just appreciate the Active Towns Podcast.

You giving a conduit to those of us that are working in this space and doing things in this space to talk about how we can do things differently and move that needle more towards active transportation and active people and safe and healthy environments for all road users. Yeah, I'm sure whatever we didn't cover in this podcast.
You'll catch it another podcast in the future.

[00:47:16] John: In another episode and another time. Okay, then I do have another question for you then what would be your best day ever?

[00:47:27] Sarah: That's a good one. I will say, and I know I sent you a text from a resident in the town of St. Michael's, where I was working. I think professionally feeling like I'm improving, people's live on the ground. not moving them necessarily the needle big picture, but that the work I'm doing as a planner is saving someone's life.

And I think it goes back to me being raised by a first responder. I'm a firefighter and police officer. My dad did both and he gets made fun of for it. So I think that Really making sure that the work I'm doing is helping people and not hindering people. I will also say I love experiencing new places by bike.

The things that you see and interact with, I think are just a lot more like humanistic. So I love whenever I'm visiting cities, I love riding a bike through any city because just the way you experience the city is different. So I just think knowing professionally I'm saving a person's life through the work that I'm doing or saving lives, hopefully, but then I also walk and bike and and enjoy biking.

Like it's my relaxation time as just a human being. Balancing those two and getting those two in a day would probably be my answer.

[00:48:45] John: Yeah, that's awesome. That's great. Now you have some travel planned.

[00:48:50] Sarah: Yeah, I'm headed off to Paris.

[00:48:54] John: Yeah. Very good. Okay. That's excellent. And you're gonna try to squeeze this trip in before this podcast gets a posted, correct?

[00:49:01] Sarah: Yes. I know we might need to do another update. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to Paris for a few days. I've been to Paris before, but actually fun fact. I have a friend who. All of their favorite restaurants in a city across the entire world. So they shared their Google map with me this morning of their favorite their favorite restaurants.

And they'd been to Paris in 2018, but while I was looking at Google maps, I was fiddling around with stuff. And in Paris they have all the People's Streets mapped in Paris. I'm going with a non transportation friend and I'm probably gonna make her go experience some of the car-free zones.

As we know, Paris recently reduced speed limits in the center of the city. And obviously they have People's Streets, so I'm going to go check some out. I was recently actually in Italy As well, and another friend who was traveling with me, who's also not in transportation, was making fun of me.

Cause I spent like an hour at a multimodal roundabout. It had a bus that had a tram. It had a separated bike lane. It had designated pedestrian signal where it was just like a pedestrian scramble mixed with around about like it had mopeds, it had motorcycles it was like the most multimodal roundabout I've ever seen.

It was in Milan. And I literally was like, Ooh. And I think I might've sent you the video of it, but oh my gosh, it was the most about, and man, it was magic, but my friends who aren't in transportation, they're always like, can we be done? Can we go now?

[00:50:31] John: Yes, you did send me that video.

So I will do this for the audience. I'll make sure that when we edit this out, we're gonna we'll have a little a little clip from the Milan. So that'll be part of the outro to the video is the, yes, it is possible. Yeah, here's your assignment for next week. So hopefully you're going to be here so that we can launch this podcast episode on Friday, live in the morning or the afternoon we'll negotiate that.

but your assignment during next week, when you're traveling is to capture some of the amazing work that is going on in Paris right now, because it's truly amazing the steps that they're making to transform the environment, they really are getting serious. Mayor Hildalgo is committed to making Paris much more people-friendly and it's, it really is.

In 2015, when I was there for the very first car-free day, the quote that she had in the newspaper was we've got a problem. We can't even see the Eiffel tower through the exhaust and through the smog, we have to do something different. And Paris. Is going to be so much better because Paris became beautiful and amazing prior to the automobile.
And then the automobile has really diminished the quality of life of that fine city. And so it'll be interesting to see some of the progress and that you see on the ground. So since I can't be there next week with you, that's your assignment is to bring back some of the goods, some good photo photography and some video.

[00:52:01] Sarah: Yeah. We know that urban renewal happened all over the world, like in the 1950s and the 1970s. And we know that a lot of European cities have undone the things that didn't work and the U S is still figuring out how to undo these things. Whereas Europe has already on done them, look at the Netherlands there were highways are running through cities and they've turned them into other environments that are safer for all road users.
So yeah, I will definitely do that. And I know that Paris and a lot of places. And I think the U S says is starting to think about these changes, but everything is connected. Like carbon emissions is connected to safety is connected to multimodal and designing facilities for all road users improves accessibility and equity.

Like it's all connected, which is what's so fascinating. Challenging about the transportation system.

[00:52:46] John: And it's one of the reasons why we can't just boil it down to one thing and just say safety. It has to be all of those things to your point. And I think that's a wonderful place to leave.

This particular episode is to basically say that, yeah we talked a lot today about safety and safe systems and all of that, but at the end of the day, they're healthier, they're fiscally more productive. It's all connected and vibrant and exciting for people to interact with. Congratulations on the new job, the new role and everything.

And I look forward to catching up with you again maybe in a year or so on this venue, Sarah. Thank you so very.

[00:53:27] Sarah: Thank you, John, for doing this important work. I am a fan of Active Towns, so I was very excited when you invited me on. Can I do a little dance? Cause we had no technology issues.

[00:53:37] John: Thank you all so much for tuning in to episode number 1 0 2 of the active towns podcast. I hope you enjoyed this chat with Sarah and I look forward to teaming up with her in designing a whole new approach to safety town or traffic garden installations for future generations based on a safe systems approach, to learn more about the safe systems approach and the documents that we discussed.

Please check out the links in the show notes or more importantly on the landing page for this episode at activetowns.org. That's all for this week's episode, but before I let you go, just a quick reminder, please help me to grow the culture of activity movement by making a donation to activities.

Spreading the word and subscribing to our YouTube channel and or your favorite podcatcher. Thank you all so much for your support and for tuning in until next time.

This is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers!