Beacon, New York Planning Board Training Sessions 2022, 8 Feb 2022

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From YouTube: Beacon Planning Board Training 2-8-22

Description

Beacon Planning Board training session covering "Traffic Calming on Main Street."

A

Yeah we should begin I'm ready.

B

C

um Today, for a workshop with the regular meeting began at 7 30., uh we usually do a training session from 7 to 7 30 and tonight we're gonna talk about traffic, calming issues on Main Street.

C

It's part of the access committee's work um and they're preparing our sort of a summary report of all the recommendations now and we're fighting through this section on speeding and traffic calming, and um that's the last section in the uh in the report.

C

So back in 2019, there was a a study done a two-day session sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration on pedestrian safety and they brought in a team of Consultants to go up and down Main Street and make sort of interim recommendations, and uh this is their report- the cover you can see no crosswalks at the intersection. This is at Walnut at that time.

C

This is before the pandemic, so it provides good ammunition because, since the pandemic we haven't been able to do hardly any sort of inventory work because things are so disruptive in terms of the parklets and everything else.

C

One of the things they did was they: um they looked at traffic data accident reports for the previous 10 years, and so this these Maps, going from Walcott on this end over to Churchill on this end, shows The Pedestrian accidents in yellow and the bicycle crashes in green, which is not a remarkable number for a 10-year period. But you.

D

B

How they cluster.

C

Around Willow and Cedar and walnut, and especially teller I think, what's most surprising about this. What's most surprising to me is I always thought that this area around Churchill Street, was probably the most dangerous part of of Main Street. Everybody always thinks that, because it's on a curve- and it's got this weird angled intersection- no accidents- there reported uh out of those accidents- um 73 were at intersections.

C

So it's not the most. The bulk of them are sort of turning incidents in particular left turns. Almost all of them were left turn pedestrian crashes or crashes involving pedestrians and um the the other major contributor, but it was a minority amount. Was people walking up between parked cars?

C

um So you can see the traffic volumes on Main Street are relatively low. People always complain about parking and traffic congestion, and those are the complaints on Main Street access committee tends to hear speeding. But if you look at the numbers, the numbers are relatively low for Main Street. In fact, it's too low for sort of a business district.

C

Generally speaking, you want to have a certain amount of traffic, it helps slow cars number one and you want a lot of passersby looking at your storefronts if you're in business, so that number here is uh the peak number in 2019 was 67.74 and just by comparison. Fishkill has over fifteen thousand cars at annual average daily traffic and Wappingers Falls has 13 000, plus I.

A

Find that a little bit unusual, because when I am on Main Street during the weekends, it does seem very congested. People seem to get very impatient. I've had people yell at me, because I was stopping to parallel park. Yeah had a guy rolled out his window and tell me I was on a thoroughfare and I needed to keep moving, couldn't fall into his face.

A

um You know the I see people one of the one of the things I see on Main Street. That scares me is: is people getting frantic to get to a space? They see a space they're racing towards it or they're doing a U-turn to get to it either on tyronda or Main Street um It's. That kind of, like uh you know bad decision is driven by hurry up and and find the parking spot.

C

A

Are we just so? Are we so low during the work week that that's what's creating that average? The.

C

Average daily is measured on a work day.

A

Yeah because it worked during the week, it can be a ghost town, but on the weekends, it's it's dangerous and congested right.

C

Well, we also looked at um all the accumulated traffic studies that were done before the pandemic for the five years between the pandemic and um in the five years before that um to see level of service issues to see if there were backed up and many of those Saturday, as well as a peak day on peak hour on Saturday, as well as peak hour on a week, typical weekday and what they found almost across the board.

C

Actually across the board was the level of service on Main, Street, Was, A and B, almost nothing in terms of delay and, uh generally speaking, you don't want to see it's not recommended to have A and B level of service on Main Street, because that just means people are cruising on through uh rather than being held up and saying. Oh, that's a new store, maybe I'll go to that restaurant tonight or whatever.

C

You want a certain amount of congestion in order to slow people down, especially on our main street, because there's very few reasons to stop. If it's not congested, there's only two lights on Main Street. Three, if you count the dummy light um and no stop signs.

C

So once you get around the corner on across there, you can cruise on through, as if you hit the light and like you say, people tend to speed up at lights rather than slow down, because they want to beat the if it's green, they want to make it sure they get through before it turns red.

C

uh The only level of service C on Main Street was Westbound at Walcott, so it's getting off. Main Street at the at the route 90, and the only measured one that I found at level of servers. D was tear on to that Saturday peak hour, trying to get out onto Main Street.

A

That's a very difficult place to see down Main Street when you're turning from tier on to out onto Main Street because of the parked cars.

E

C

Well, it's a through f a means, there's hardly any delay at an intersection less than 10 seconds and f means it's a long delay. You know maybe two cycles of light or over 80 Seconds worth of delay at a traffic signal as sort of the general. You can correct me if I'm wrong Stark.

F

No yeah, that's all correct.

C

B

C

At least from the measurements, there's not a capacity problem, there's not too much volumes on Bay Street, there's not too much delays on Main Street, except in extraordinary peak hours, which are on weekends and when it's tourist time, rather than from average, daily residential and business type traffic.

C

But there is an issue with speed: we've seen that there are accidents out of those 30 accidents over the 10-year two were serious injury, and then we just had a fatality here on Main Street.

C

um So that's you know, gets everybody's attention and you want to. You want to try to deal with speed and and safety even.

B

C

There aren't capacity volumes or Peak problems that are extraordinary.

A

The other, the other issue, I've noticed, is that on the weekends, because what's Main Street speed limit, is it 30 it's 30 miles per hour? So when you're on a bicycle, you you know, there's not enough room in the lane. For you and cars want to speed around you because general. You know you could almost keep up you. Could you could almost keep up with the speed of traffic if the speed limit was slow down a little bit and it wouldn't be such an issue where people would be trying to pass you all the time.

A

There's not enough really room between parked cars and the traffic lanes for bicyclists to you know to be being passed constantly by cars, and so, as a result, I I do not I try not to bike on Main Street on the weekends after 10 or 11 A.M. It's a it's.

C

Basically, a so speed is a is an issue uh and you can see by the graph at the top of the chart at the top. um It makes a really big difference in terms of pedestrian injuries and deaths. So, if you're hit by a car at 20 miles an hour, a typical car, if it's a SUV than if it's a sedan, but on average 10 percent of people die in in 20 mile an hour crashes, and it goes up to 40 percent at 30 miles an hour and 80 percent at 40 miles an hour.

C

So there's a real incentive to keep people driving slowly. I just went from Bank Square to Fountain Square, and it takes less than four minutes to go the hall length of Main Street, and yet people have the speed. I, don't know why they're not gaining any significant amount. That's it going at 20 miles an hour four minutes. So it's not like uh you're gaining 10 minutes by going faster right.

F

C

Impossible so um around the country in many cities are looking at a 20 mile. An hour. Speed limit under the banner 20 is plenty and uh Portland Oregon Norfolk Virginia Denver, a slew of cities, are lowering the speed limits, especially in business districts.

C

So that's one of the recommendations of the access committee is to take it down from what it is currently now 25 to 20. and to put up signs. So people know that it's funny.

C

Another way of dealing with traffic calming is to narrow the lanes now. Beacon has relatively narrow, Lanes already, um but it's inconsistently narrow. So in some cases like this flock which I show at the top at Rite Aid there, it's nine feet, two, which is really too narrow. You know, and so there's a lot of complaints about clip mirrors in those in those really narrow sections and then in other areas, it's up to 11 feet or close to 11 feet, which is too wide so with the and what they've done is they've uniformly started.

C

Eight foot parking spaces on both sides, so the lanes get narrower and wider, but the parking Lane stays the same, and what we've suggested is to do the exact opposite to set a narrow, consistent Lane for Main Street, that's not too wide, but not too narrow, and we picked number ten foot two um and then you vary the width of the parking Lanes in order to make that consistent, Lane with so um another traffic. Calming thing is put something in the middle. You know there, but on.

D

A narrow Lane you.

C

Can't really do that. You can't put bike Lanes in you, can't you can't put in chicanes or other sorts of deviations to try to slow people down. You do have the dummy light on East Main Street, uh that's a great calming influencer could be, except that that intersection is extraordinarily wise, and so you know it's 46 feet from across where that crosswalk should be. There was no crosswalk there, but it's 46 feet across an extra 10 or 15 feet over what you really want.

C

So um one of the recommendations is to redesign East Main Street intersection completely and put in big curb extensions and a crosswalk across there and to make this a three-way stoplight.

C

So the the light would blink red in all directions and everybody would come up, establish eye contact with pedestrians, with birds at the other Edge and then proceed so that you wouldn't have people trying to Dart out between. You know people on the street jaywalking her Crossing at what should be a crosswalk, um so there's a whole design in the in the report on how this should be redesigned.

E

Is there any talk of getting rid of the dummy light.

C

No there's only two of them in the entire state of New York. It's a Historic, Landmark and.

E

It I heard it I heard it in the country.

C

I I've seen the one up in Canada area or.

D

Wherever it is,.

C

I think it's only in New, York state, there's two of them there's probably more.

C

Another way is is curb extensions. Now the city is in the process of finishing up that project and hopefully, when it's paved it'll look a lot better than the way it is, but um you can see on the top. That's a favorite place for uh trucks to park during delivery, as in the no parking zones at the intersections where the stripes are, and so the curve extensions eliminate that that real blockage of visibility of pedestrians and cars coming out from side streets, the.

D

Curb extensions.

C

Will prevent that from happening? It'll shorten up the crosswalks it'll reduce speeds, anything that creates a sense of side. Friction! That's! What traffic traffic calming is really about. It's about unconsciously, slowing people down, because there's enough feeling of tightness and and threat that they naturally slow down.

C

B

You can put all.

C

The speed limits you want, because enforcement is never going to be perfect.

C

um It's never going to be close to perfect, it seems, um but if you, if you do certain traffic calming actually, it naturally slows people down to where they abide by the speed limit without knowing it.

E

um I, this is a little bit off that topic, but I wanted to point out that those uh along Main Street there are several um intersections where there are that middle picture, the the one-way sign the one-way Arrow sign to the left is mounted on Two Poles yeah, which- and it's like right in the path of pedestrians.

E

If they're going straight and not not taking that angled crosswalk and there are several they're they're seeing it seems like an unnecessary obstacle plus the sign is low, so somebody could just walk right into it and I'm wondering why that why it was designed that way.

C

uh I I can't say that for sure one way or the other, but the point being, is that the crosswalks will be relocated when they're re-striped so that they won't be where that sign is.

E

No, but the sign is placed still so that I.

C

E

Like right in the path of pedestrian traffic, it's like as a pedestrian. It strikes me as um just somebody put it there who's totally a blue who, just like, doesn't walk yeah.

C

Well, there has to be a one-way signs, are sort of a real critical safety sign and I think they.

E

Have yeah for sure and somebody feed them.

C

D

C

Was three feet to the left? It would probably be better for.

E

C

uh So I didn't have any signs of of what this will look like once they put in the but I picked up a a slide from Great Barrington Massachusetts. So you can see how curb extensions, shorten the crosswalks and create a sort of real high visibility for pedestrians at corners and the Bold.

C

um What's called Continental crosswalks a sort of Abbey Road Stripes um provide the the best way of of marking crosswalks that also um prevent cars from picking up the paint too easily because they have parallel spaces for the for the tires to go straight.

B

C

On-Street parking are also considered traffic calming anything that gives you a sense of enclosure, so taller buildings are a traffic calming device and they're close enough to the sidewalks, um certainly treat the street trees on street parking. Definitely so anything that gives that side friction will help naturally, show people slow people down, not everybody, not a hundred percent, but the vast majority of people drive slower when the when there's a sense of narrowness about the street.

A

What about those um those like small I, wouldn't really call them bollards, but they're. Basically little stick ups, that that are often like in the center of a pedestrian walkway. They have a sign on them saying you know it's an admonition that you have to yield to pedestrians.

C

A

C

Lanes are really wide or in the village of fishfield. The lanes are too wide, and so they put those things in the middle to try to slow people down, because they're naturally want to go fast, because the lanes are wide and bacon. They can't there's no room for those which is a good thing. They kept, they tried them and they kept getting knocked over.

F

um Okay, usually like DPW, does not dpws like don't like them, I think in Albany. They don't allow them because.

C

F

Just get run over.

C

They're, a real maintenance.

F

Issue now another thing.

C

That the committee is considering, and these These.

D

Are the sort of.

C

Tougher choices that are obviously not going to be let up to the access committee they're going to be part of the city council in public discussion, but you can slow people down with raised crosswalks or mid-block um crosswalks, or even raised intersections in which you ramp up slowly they're, not like a speed bump they're, a very shallow ramp coming into them.

C

You bring up the intersection to the level of the curb, so instead of pedestrians have to ramp down wheelchair users having to ramp down to the street the cars ramp up to the intersection and at the corners you have bollards to protect the corners, but it's a straight walk across which gives everybody less trip hazards for pedestrians and cars got Motors. They can get up those ramps easy enough, but it does give enough of a of a textural and and grade change that you feel it.

C

And so, when you come to that intersection, instead of having a traffic light which encourages you to speed and encourages you to look up while you speed, rather than look for pedestrians, because you're looking at the light to see if it's going to turn yellow and whether you have to hit on your brakes so you're. Looking at the light, as opposed to looking at The Pedestrian crosswalk, the raised intersections the raised crosswalks provide that slowdown without distracting people's attention. They're actually focused on the ramp coming up and the striping rather than looking somewhere else.

D

Which cities has that been implemented? You know.

C

This the one on the bottom is a proposal for Lark Street in Albany I'm, not familiar with Lark Street, but I pulled it offline.

C

um There's a lot of raised crosswalks in the country, not as many raised intersections because they're more expensive, but if the city wanted to do them now would be the time to do them because they but I just stuck in all those ramps that they get curb extension, so they probably wouldn't.

C

But, for instance, at um the committee recommended a midwife crosswalk at the near the Beacon Theater, where that intersection is with the parking lot on Van nuitec, because that's a long block and people build up speed there, because the lanes are a little wider there. So you could have a mid-block crosswalk there at that intersection with the access to the parking lot in the rear.

C

And then they there's always the stop signs.

C

um The committee recommended stop signs on all Corners um within two blocks of Main Street, there's sort of a hit and miss pattern on the side streets around Main Street. So some are two-way. Some are four-way and it's very confusing some blow. People Blow by them um and others are expecting people to stop it's kind of dangerous.

C

So the easiest way to deal with it is make them all stop signs. There were even a bunch of several intersections where there was no stop sign at Main Street, which made no sense so like Willow, Street and skank. There were no stop signs, so people be able to sort of cruise right in so we recommended stop signs at any intersection street with Main Street and then throwing out a consideration of having a stop sign or two along Main Street in the straightaways.

C

So it's a Elm, Street or Willow Street before people could build up ahead of speed steam coming around those corners and out towards the light, put a stop sign in and always stop sign, maybe at Willow, where people have a hard time coming out. It's a two-way street where there's traffic actually coming on the Main Street as opposed to going away from it. You could have a three-way stop there and that would slow people down and build up that Vermont.

C

There's a big debate about stop signs as whether they're appropriate as a traffic calming measure, because people don't always stop at them. They sort of roll through them, but even rolling through them is better than blowing through um when there's no stop sign and.

E

Then the final suggestion was: oh sorry, could I just make a quick comment about stop signs at intersections a place where I feel vulnerable as a pedestrian is when there's uh when the street is going the same direction on either side of Main Street and somebody's I have to cross I?

E

Think it's like Elm, Street I think is like that, so I have to cross Elm Street and if there's a break in Main Street traffic, somebody trying to cross is just going to zip across really fast and not necessarily see pedestrians in the crosswalk, especially when they're trying to get to that gas station. So.

C

It's true, so there might be a couple side streets in which a stop sign might and always stop sign might be appropriate to allow side traffic to come in. So people like Willow is a two-way street. There are very few two-way intersections with Main Street um to Aranda is another one, um so any skank is another one, so um they're just throwing that out as consideration and then finally, the the last one is um leading pedestrian intervals.

C

That's a technique where you give the pedestrians a head start, something like three to four five six seconds before the light turns green, so that the pedestrians have a chance to get past the first Lane uh and get out there where people can see them to avoid the left. Turners.

C

um um That's recommended for tellers, certainly, and maybe for Chestnut as well, where there are traffic signals. The idea you could also replace chestnut with a stop, always stop sign which again people with traffic lights.

C

um There's too many accidents at traffic lights, where people blow through them. You know they either speed through them or they they miss them and because they're looking somewhere else at a storefront or something. And then you have serious issues so.

B

Those are sort of.

C

The the things on the table, not if none of this has been decided, this just sort of a draft reporting stage at this point. All of these have been interim recommendations to the council and will be incorporated into the um summer report of suggestions and again fully vetted with the public before anything decided.

F

Just to weigh in there's a good resource, the fhwa, if you just Google traffic calming primer, there's a good website that comes up. That has multiple modules, but one that's very helpful is a toolbox that kind of lists other traffic calming measures and gives you engineering metrics, as well as some case studies and examples. So.

E

F

The fhwa Federal Highway.

D

F

D

I'd make that is that, um if you, you know, if you've experienced other more urban and older environments, a lot of them that are that don't have a lot of Highway automobile um architecture, the automobile, centered, signage lights that are more pedestrian oriented, even though they allow. Automobiles are naturally safer because, like that, um the curve at Churchill people's attentions are more focused when they're in situations where there aren't Highway scale or high speed automobile oriented things like signage and lights. Like you were saying.

D

So one of the things you might want to think about is focusing on The Pedestrian experience as opposed to the automobile, Automotive, signage and lighting, and all that which also tends to put people in a frame of mind that that the that they're in a pedestrian environment with a car, rather than an automotive environment, that pedestrians are unsafely uh also in.

C

D

Think the raised intersection is.

C

The best example of that, where you create sort of a pedestrian priority place and the cars are allowed to go through, but they have to have a little inconvenience to do so.

A

So I guess it's a little bit past 7 30. So we have to move on and open our regular meeting.

A