Columbus City and Suburban Development News (metropolitan area, communities, compared)
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It's easy to see how this crash happened at this intersection thanks to Columbus's inherently broken road design: four lanes travel lanes, no turning lane, no stop or traffic signal for several blocks in either direction encourages high driving speeds, and the speed limit is already too high at 35 MPH. So the other week we have people driving into a business on a high speed stretch of High in Clintonville (again), today we have a car running into a bus stop, both incidents took place in the middle of the day, not at dawn or dusk when visibility is an issue.
Quote:
Car Strikes Roadside Bench, 2 Injured
Posted: May 27, 2015 11:48 AM CDT
Updated: May 27, 2015 11:52 AM CDT
By: Andy LongCONNECT
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Two people sitting on a bench near the intersection of Livingston Avenue and Lilley Avenue were hit by a car early Wednesday afternoon.
According to Columbus police, it happened around 12:15 p.m.
Cleveland Ave has an identical layout to Livingston: 4 travel lanes, two in each direction with few stops and high speed limits. The results in the past few months? Well, a car jumped a curb and killed a woman on the sidewalk.
Pedestrians crossing the street were hit by a speeding car. The crosswalk at this intersection has no traffic signal or stop sign to ensure traffic stops for pedestrians, not even pedestrian-activated flashing yield lights over the intersection. Unlike the Short North which has traffic signals on virtually every block to ensure stop and go traffic, the closest crosswalks on Cleveland with a traffic signal to stop traffic is either 3 blocks south on E Weber, a four minute detour, or north 3 blocks which is five minutes. That's what people living here who want a safe crossing need to do all the time for a safer crossing even though a crosswalk is right there, because there's nothing to stop traffic. If there were a traffic signal here the effect on motorists would be unnoticeable, but instead it's resident pedestrians who are heavily inconveinced and endangered.
This is what's accepted as the status quo and there's certainly a case for this transportation inequity being discrimination based on income and even race; Gay St and other streets Downtown along with N High in the Short North, both higher income and much whiter areas, have been in the process of being calmed for the safety of everyone there whether on foot, bike or in car, but these low-income majority African-American districts? The total opposite is what their business districts are left with.
Such crashes are not isolated occurrences and in fact prove that action needs to be taken. These frequent crashes are the equivalent of an alarm going off. Something is very wrong and needs to be addressed now: this is an epidemic and people are dying. This is a city-wide disaster that should the at the forefront of civic-minded conversations, yet even as the evidence piles up at mountainous levels everyone is turning a blind eye to the urgency which this matter requires, if it's even on their radar, which adds a whole other level to the problem. It's hard to enough to get decent businesses to open up on these streets and as if perception of crime wasn't a deterrent, then cars routinely crashing into your business, customers, or even you, doesn't help matters.
It's easy to see how this crash happened at this intersection thanks to Columbus's inherently broken road design: four lanes travel lanes, no turning lane, no stop or traffic signal for several blocks in either direction encourages high driving speeds, and the speed limit is already too high at 35 MPH. So the other week we have people driving into a business on a high speed stretch of High in Clintonville (again), today we have a car running into a bus stop, both incidents took place in the middle of the day, not at dawn or dusk when visibility is an issue.
Cleveland Ave has an identical layout to Livingston: 4 travel lanes, two in each direction with few stops and high speed limits. The results in the past few months? Well, a car jumped a curb and killed a woman on the sidewalk.
Pedestrians crossing the street were hit by a speeding car. The crosswalk at this intersection has no traffic signal or stop sign to ensure traffic stops for pedestrians, not even pedestrian-activated flashing yield lights over the intersection. Unlike the Short North which has traffic signals on virtually every block to ensure stop and go traffic, the closest crosswalks on Cleveland with a traffic signal to stop traffic is either 3 blocks south on E Weber, a four minute detour, or north 3 blocks which is five minutes. That's what people living here who want a safe crossing need to do all the time for a safer crossing even though a crosswalk is right there, because there's nothing to stop traffic. If there were a traffic signal here the effect on motorists would be unnoticeable, but instead it's resident pedestrians who are heavily inconveinced and endangered.
This is what's accepted as the status quo and there's certainly a case for this transportation inequity being discrimination based on income and even race; Gay St and other streets Downtown along with N High in the Short North, both higher income and much whiter areas, have been in the process of being calmed for the safety of everyone there whether on foot, bike or in car, but these low-income majority African-American districts? The total opposite is what their business districts are left with.
Such crashes are not isolated occurrences and in fact prove that action needs to be taken. These frequent crashes are the equivalent of an alarm going off. Something is very wrong and needs to be addressed now: this is an epidemic and people are dying. This is a city-wide disaster that should the at the forefront of civic-minded conversations, yet even as the evidence piles up at mountainous levels everyone is turning a blind eye to the urgency which this matter requires, if it's even on their radar, which adds a whole other level to the problem. It's hard to enough to get decent businesses to open up on these streets and as if perception of crime wasn't a deterrent, then cars routinely crashing into your business, customers, or even you, doesn't help matters.
More regressive transportation spending in Columbus on an approach which has been proven everywhere that it does not work: adding more motor vehicle lanes. $2.7 million city dollars would be better spent on alternatives like buses and bikeways. Instead, with the only spending in the area going toward single-occupant vehicles there'll only be an increase in those.
Columbus has solidified it's path to being a backwater for mass transit and bike infrastructure to the point that it now can't catch up to cities performing only moderately well in these options vs sitting in traffic jams. Even sprawling Sacramento is covered in bike lanes. Columbus is nowhere close dropping down to 108th on BikeScore for 2015 while Sacramento rose to 30th place, so despite having virtually the exact same low scores for walking and transit they at least invested in one alternative to cars instead of none.
Columbus council considering $16.5M to widen Sawmill and Hard roads
By Lucas Sullivan The Columbus Dispatch • Monday May 18, 2015 10:27 AM
Relief for one of the Northwest side’s most congested intersections is likely as the Columbus City Council mulls a $16.5 million road improvement project at Hard and Sawmill roads.
The council is expected to approve the road project today when it meets at City Hall at 5 p.m. The city is paying about $2.7 million of the project costs from street rehabilitation bonds and the rest of the funding is coming from a grant from the Ohio Department of Transportation.
And here's the discussion on CU. someone else brought up the fact that Minneapolis is building 30 miles of protected bikeways for a fraction of the cost of the comparably short road widening project on Sawmill.
Mindless boosterism was offered as a defense: Columbus is building protected bike lanes (a link to Summit Ave was provided and doesn't match 30 miles) and surely, Minneapolis is widening it's streets too (we're not, we're narrowing our major east-west downtown street for a protected bikeway and prioritizing buses, we narrowed W 36th for a protected bikeway, both lanes of W 54th are being narrowed for bike lanes, just recently 16 blocks of Chicago Ave were narrowed with new bike lanes and more)
What would you know of that intersection when you live in the Twin Cities...living in Dublin and having to go up that way a lot...that area needs widened to handle the # of cars...Columbus is never going to stop catering to cars as that is the way most True Americans live...you will never get me out of my car. Mass transit is needed here...but the area in question here needs widened to speed up the commute time in this area.
Pedestrian deaths don't only occur in Columbus. And you can't just tear up all the roads within 212 square miles and rebuild all of it right now.
In the first link it mostly lists suburban incidents where roads are wider and faster. And in the last one that was in St Paul. The point isn't that pedestrian fatalities occur everywhere, but that cities like Columbus aren't addressing that while others do.
With regards to the second link our MSA ranked 46th of 51 out of the most dangerous for pedestrians. Even including wide fast suburban roads Minneapolis has helped offset that. We're taking roads that look like Cleveland Ave and narrowing them and adding bike lanes. This is how we're addressing unsafe streets, but I don't see this urgency n Columbus. The New Lowry Avenue NE Will Have Less Room for Cars, More for Bikes | City Pages
What would you know of that intersection when you live in the Twin Cities...living in Dublin and having to go up that way a lot...that area needs widened to handle the # of cars...Columbus is never going to stop catering to cars as that is the way most True Americans live...you will never get me out of my car. Mass transit is needed here...but the area in question here needs widened to speed up the commute time in this area.
To be fair, widening roads is proven to do the very opposite... it actually makes traffic worse, not better, because it encourages more people to drive.
As to Mplsite's ridiculous point... the only way to get rid of car accidents altogether is to get rid of cars. That's not likely in our lifetimes, although we can build with multi-modal infrastructure so that it reduces auto-traffic.
In the first link it mostly lists suburban incidents where roads are wider and faster. And in the last one that was in St Paul. The point isn't that pedestrian fatalities occur everywhere, but that cities like Columbus aren't addressing that while others do.
With regards to the second link our MSA ranked 46th of 51 out of the most dangerous for pedestrians. Even including wide fast suburban roads Minneapolis has helped offset that. We're taking roads that look like Cleveland Ave and narrowing them and adding bike lanes. This is how we're addressing unsafe streets, but I don't see this urgency n Columbus. The New Lowry Avenue NE Will Have Less Room for Cars, More for Bikes | City Pages
Why would you see something positive out of Columbus? That would work directly against your modus operandi and all the negative hard work you've been doing these last few years.
To be fair, widening roads is proven to do the very opposite... it actually makes traffic worse, not better, because it encourages more people to drive.
As to Mplsite's ridiculous point... the only way to get rid of car accidents altogether is to get rid of cars. That's not likely in our lifetimes, although we can build with multi-modal infrastructure so that it reduces auto-traffic.
These aren't accidents: law abiding motorists don't run over people in crosswalks, on bus benches and walking down sidewalks. Getting rid of cars is not the only way: they have cars in European cities and way fewer pedestrian deaths. Columbus has its own example with Gay St; you can't tell me with a straight face that turning Cleveland Ave into something similar wouldn't reduce both the rate of crashes and also the severity of crashes. And if they keep the current layout of traffic signals where there's one every eight blocks or so then you're not going to affect traffic flow very much at all. Ensure that cars are moving at safer speeds on more streets is what the city should be doing and the priority should be along heavily used COTA routes like the #1 where its users have to wall to reach it: that sometimes requires crossing the street.
These aren't accidents: law abiding motorists don't run over people in crosswalks, on bus benches and walking down sidewalks. Getting rid of cars is not the only way: they have cars in European cities and way fewer pedestrian deaths. Columbus has its own example with Gay St; you can't tell me with a straight face that turning Cleveland Ave into something similar wouldn't reduce both the rate of crashes and also the severity of crashes. And if they keep the current layout of traffic signals where there's one every eight blocks or so then you're not going to affect traffic flow very much at all. Ensure that cars are moving at safer speeds on more streets is what the city should be doing and the priority should be along heavily used COTA routes like the #1 where its users have to wall to reach it: that sometimes requires crossing the street.
Yes, because I'm sure those people intentionally ran them down.
And there is no way in hell that even if Columbus did all that that you simply wouldn't move the goal posts to something else. You do this already with your lists of neighborhoods that you claim lack city investment. As soon as one gets investment, you just add a different one. I mean, you're the kind of person who holds a city especially accountable for something that literally happens everywhere on the planet with cars. These aren't expectations born of rationality or fair judgment. You have an axe to grind, and nothing else will ever matter. The least you could do is at least admit as much so we can finally drop the charade. It's been too long.
Yes, because I'm sure those people intentionally ran them down.
And there is no way in hell that even if Columbus did all that that you simply wouldn't move the goal posts to something else. You do this already with your lists of neighborhoods that you claim lack city investment. As soon as one gets investment, you just add a different one. I mean, you're the kind of person who holds a city especially accountable for something that literally happens everywhere on the planet with cars. These aren't expectations born of rationality or fair judgment. You have an axe to grind, and nothing else will ever matter. The least you could do is at least admit as much so we can finally drop the charade. It's been too long.
The fact of the matter is that these crashes are predictable based on road designs that encourage speeding. They are also preventable by changing these designs to ones that encourage slower driving: you'll notice that Gay St doesn't have news articles month after month about motorists running over pedestrians. It's a design that prioritizes lives over saving a few seconds driving.
This is something that doesn't happen all over the world: there's a reason why crash rates are less frequent and severe in others while American cities are much higher in comparison. And among our MSAs there's a reason why Columbus isn't among the safest even when compared to its peers.
Other cities, particularly on the coasts, have been much more aggressive in making improvements. You're the only one here who thinks Columbus exists in a bubble and whatever huge improvements occur elsewhere that dwarf what Columbus does (or doesn't in most cases) can be offset by much less: like finally narrowing Summit adding bike lanes which also is beneficial for pedestrians. And no, once completed that will not put Columbus at the same level as Portland or even Seattle.
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