General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

Your post said that you drive down Davenport "all the time" (what does that mean exactly?) and can count "on one hand" the number of people on bike or foot there. Well, I've biked down Davenport more than five times, so I guess my "data" are better than yours. Add that to the other poster who said he bikes there and appreciates the slower speed of car traffic, and I guess your observations are limited.

I'd say conservatively I drive at least once a week, to-and-fro, for the last year. That is 100 data points, which is not insubstantial. In fact the sample is large enough that we can upper bound the amount of time that the street is occupied, even if my sample is assumed to be instantaneous to your advantage (instead of the more accurate two minute each way).

Since I've seen less than five pedestrians this means that the street is occupied less than 1/20th of the time, otherwise my observed sample would be larger. This means there is a pedestrian in the street for 3 minutes of every hour. Coincidentally enough this is a good estimate of how long would someone use the street to walk down on it for 1/4 of its length at walking speed. This means one person per hour or about 12 people per day walk on that street. At a cost of $3 million we spent about $80 per each pedestrian use (note: use not user) for 10 years.

By the way, if we were building the street from scratch I'd be in favour of the current configuration, since it looks nicer with the median. What is questionable is the decision to apply the diet to this particular unused street.

So 3 million isn't *just* for pedestrians, for one, they repaved the road, so that's for drivers, built a traffic circle, again for drivers, and as a result traffic speeds are decreased and the road functions better, which also does benefit drivers as well as other users.  Finally, there's cyclists as well.

As for your numbers, let me ask you this, have you actually walked or ridden down the road?  I believe it is fairly common for drivers to underestimate the number of pedestrians using a road simply because they don't see them, as, quite reasonably, drivers are usually focused on the road.  When I drive, I certainly don't notice pedestrians as much as I do while walking.  Even biking I will tend not to notice them as much.  You should try walking it, or at least riding it before passing judgement.  You've heard from several on here who have ridden or walked the road who contradict your numbers.  And again, there's a bus route and several destinations on the street which would see far more foot traffic than you suggest already.

Also, about cost, Davenport was a full rebuild, most road diets are just paint, and maybe a few curb changes, and often cost not more than 150k.