Automobile Alley Redo: The Poll
Considering all the discussion and debate prompted by Tuesday’s column on Jeff Speck and Automobile Alley, let’s have a vote:
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Comments
I’m telling ya, 5 – 8 years from now we’ll be complaining about how slow it is to get in/out of downtown and wondering why we ever took out 2 lanes on Broadway.
I am very confused by the poll. The way the question is worded makes it seem that in order to add angled parking, one lane from both sides of traffic would need to be eliminated. Please clarify. Both Jeffrey and myself seem to be misunderstanding. Would angled parking really add very many spaces for business? How would this impact pedestrians?
This is why The Oklahoman should never, never, never consider editors expendible.
Fix made Liz. Thanks for pointing it out.
Angled parking would be fine, I suppose, but what would help more would be to install curb extensions, which could be retrofitted to the current parallel parking, or could be utilized in conjunction with the proposed angled parking. Curb extensions would effectively take two of the five lanes out of the equation for pedestrians crossing the street, and would have a traffic-calming effect. The benefit, however, is that they theoretically wouldn’t reduce the traffic-carrying capacity of the street (the parking lanes, already in place, aren’t traffic lanes, correct?).
Another alternative would be to replace the center turn lane with a median. Cutting left turn lanes into the median would allow the traffic to remain basically unimpeded, while still protecting and welcoming pedestrians.
The best solution, purely from a pedestrian point of view, would be to incorporate BOTH the curb extensions AND the median. Suddenly Broadway would be a walkable nirvana, yet the vehicular traffic counts wouldn’t necessarily suffer. Again, four lanes of traffic could remain in this scenario, provided you stick with parallel parking. From the pedestrian point of view though, it would seem like truly four lanes (with a protected stop in the middle), instead of the SEVEN LANE (four traffic lanes, center turn lane, two parking lanes) feel a pedestrian gets today.
It appears that our predecessors had much more common sense than we do today. One of the bad things about angled parking is the blind back-up into traffic flow. According to the photo, their slots are counter to the way we do it today… they BACKED into the space, which makes for a much easier departure. Good thinking!
I’d be for fewer lanes and angled parking IF we instituted a “back-in only” rule.