National Walking Expert Comes to Concord

The automobile, like any machine, is supposed to be a tool of man. But with increasing congestion, there is a growing concern that cars have gotten the upper hand and that people are making way for cars. In Concord, a citizens group toured the streets with a national expert who says he has a number of ways to level the playing field in the contest between man and car. NHPR?s Dan Gorenstein reports.

3:30 I like to build things as we come to an area?I am going to suggest that we build something in the street right now?if you will stand here.

Dan Burden is lining people up along the outer edge of McKee Square in Concord?s South End. It?s a busy place criss-crossed by six streets. Burden wants the people on his tour to serve as a human curb, an extension of the sidewalk that pushes out into the roadway. It?s a way, explains the city planning expert, to slow traffic. It?s also a technique Burden uses to get people involved, and understand they can, literally, reclaim their streets.

5:06 now what we?ve just done is reallocated the space to the needs of the community a little better?And the pedestrian has a shorter walk, and we have done it in a way where?it?s easier for the motorist to know what the pedestrian is trying to do?And we have taken nothing away from the motors, and we have slowed down their turning speed to a safer entry level into this side street.

Burden is considered an expert in walking. And shrinking the width of a street is just one of the tools he uses to make communities more pedestrian and bike friendly.

Burden is full of ideas. Speed bumps, pedestrian islands, planting grass and trees, eye-catching paint in crosswalks, roundabouts.

Two of the people forming the human curb are Hillary and Joel St. John, 14 and 13 respectively. They never really get past the busy three street intersection in front of the square. Without a car, Ballard?s, the local ice cream store is the limit of their of range.

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:59 ? We normally stay south of Ballards, b/c the park is that way, and out house, we don?t come down here unless we are in the car. We rarely ever ride our bikes into downtown or to the library?2:03 it?s sort of like a barrier.

Part of making neighborhoods more walkable is making sure people can move from one neighborhood to another on feet, or at least on bikes. Concord is in it?s second year of a project called 20/20. The purpose is to get ahead of the development curve and ultimately to create a city that is easier to live in. Amy Sheridan is executive director of the project.

1:03 ?We are building social connections again? If you make it comfortable for pedestrians, we will have more pedestrians. If we have more pedestrians, we meet our neighbors. If we meet our neighbors, we have a little more warmth in our lives. But we know our neighbors, and recognize strangers, and we either get to meet them, or we realize there is a problem and we need to do something.

Sheridan and others are hoping Burden can provide some plans for how to rearrange traffic and travel patterns in the city. Burden believes that the stories he brings from elsewhere go a long way toward making his point. He likes to talk about a 7-lane road in Tallahasse, Florida that averages one death a year.

4:05 ?The area is not economically viable?it doesn?t do a good job of moving traffic?But yet, what I?ll say is this street meets all the modern design standards, it?s got the right width of lanes, ?and yet it fails ? in terms of it?s actual performance as a highway.

But Burden has a counter example ? a road in Bellevue, Washington.

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:43 ? which is only four lanes, plus a beautiful median, plus beautiful edges, it supports transit, walking, biking, it?s lush, it?s green, in 14 years it?s been open, it?s never claimed a human life?It even moves more traffic than the seven lane highway does.

But it will take more than a toolkit of ideas and success stories to change how people move through McKee Square. Concord Police Lt. Bob Barry says slowing traffic down, and getting people to know each other is a good thing. But wonders about the domino affect of changing traffic patterns.

1:34 you can?t make changes in McKee Square, without losing sight of what will happen in other parts of the community. If you discourage traffic coming through here, there is still going to be traffic that has to go to other places. And then we will be addressing traffic going downtown?you have also got to look at it city-wide.

Concord?s Community Development Director, Roger Hawk, thinks that people are ready to hear Bruden?s ideas.
5:15 ?you have a generational shift going on, between the old transportation engineers, not necessarily physically old, but old thinking- who said that roads are there to move cars efficiently and as fast as you reasonably can. And what we are now realizing is that may be appropriate for certain roads like the interstates, but when you get down to city streets, you may need to rethink that, and give greater considerations to what non-motorists need to do in those spaces.

And if some of these new ideas take hold, it will be people, not cars, driving the agenda. For NHPR News, I?m DG