Just the facts, please, in traffic circle debate

NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

Contacts:

Warren Hultquist (303) 541-0151

David Wagner (303) 440-1005

JUST THE FACTS, PLEASE, IN TRAFFIC CIRCLE DEBATE

Boulder, CO––September 6, 2000––At a City Council hearing on September 5, 2000, supporters of traffic devices that delay emergency response made a number of misleading statements in their testimony. Several Council members apparently believed and relied upon this misinformation when they voted to make traffic circles on Pine Street and Balsam Avenue permanent, despite having been previously given correct information by the Transportation Division staff. SECONDS COUNT!, the committee backing Question 2A on Boulder's November 7th ballot, believes voters are best served when they know the facts. The committee invites public attention to the following mistaken information and corrections.

---------

Several citizens, including Council members Poinsatte and Morzel, blamed delayed emergency response on growing traffic congestion rather than traffic devices.

The Facts: The city's Transportation Annual Report of Progress for 1999, Figure 13, shows that daily traffic counts measured at 27 locations within Boulder Valley remained flat within a fraction of one percent over the five years since 1995, when the traffic circles on Pine and Balsam were installed. Figure 15 of the same report reveals that vehicle miles traveled have also been absolutely constant over that period. But, according to the April 8th, 1997 NTMP Status Report , Page 23, Paragraph 7:  "Between 1995 and 1996 [when traffic circles on Pine were installed], the response time for this corridor increased 27.8 seconds compared to an overall increase of 6.21 seconds for the City.... The Department's analysis shows that the degradation is statistically significant and highly correlated to the mitigation devices. There is a 99.989% chance that degradation in response time is related to traffic mitigation. Our statistical evidence also shows that 0.5% of the response time degradation is due to other system-wide factors."

Furthermore, delayed emergency response has exactly the same effect whether caused by congestion or traffic devices. The Fire Department's 1999 annual report states that the six-minute response target was met on only 72% of calls. To reach that goal without the addition of any more delaying traffic devices, Fire Chief Larry Donner estimates we would need up to four more fire stations, with an initial cost of $6 million and ongoing operational expenses of $3.2 million per year. So the city has no time margin to give away to traffic devices. The Fire Department Master Plan states:  “The proposed traffic mitigation projects on primary response routes will substantially worsen already long response times....In the long run, it does not matter whether emergency responders are slowed by traffic congestion or traffic mitigation; the result is the same—longer response times and a reduction in service to the public.”

---------

Testimony was given that Question 2A would require devices to be removed from 76 neighborhoods.

The Facts: 73 devices will be affected by the ordinance. These will be removed from 32 street segments; 25 of these segments are in residential neighborhoods.

---------

One speaker expressed fear that the Pearl Street Mall would have to be removed because it was more than four inches high.

The Facts: The ordinance applies only to devices purposely constructed in driving lanes of public streets. The municipal code excludes the Mall from its definition of public streets. Moreover, the ordinance contains no four-inch height restriction. It does prohibit vertical profile variations over any four-foot horizontal distance of more than one inch, excepting railroad grade crossings and slopes required by the general inclination of the roadbed, or necessary for surface drainage, or accommodating grade-separated crossings of waterways, utilities, sidewalks, paths, other public streets, or railroads. The purpose of this language is to prevent construction of prohibited speed bumps or raised crosswalks that are given different names to circumvent the law.

---------

Opponents of Question 2A claimed passage would require expenditure of up to $1 million for device removal. Council member Corson suggested that passage might necessitate reduction of city services.

The Facts: Transportation Division project managers have already forwarded detailed cost estimates for device removal to Council. They estimated $588,800 for removal of all permanent traffic devices affected by the ordinance. Beyond the engineering estimate, they plan approximately 10 percent for unspecified contingencies, which might increase the total to $646,500. Transportation staff also estimated costs to decommission temporary experiments in the Balsam and Whittier neighborhoods, which should have been removed years ago, raising their total to $689,300. Included in that figure is roughly $100,000 for more-expensive-than-necessary reconstruction at many locations with decorative paving bricks, colored concrete, and landscaping. Also incorporated is removal of structural details, like bollards and traffic-diverting curbing, that are not addressed by the ordinance, but might not have been installed in isolation. Thus, the actual removal costs directly attributable to the ordinance are $589,000. Ironically, $411,200 of that goes to remove raised obstacles installed on critical emergency response routes after Council imposed a moratorium on such devices in 1996 because of concerns about emergency response. That moratorium was never lifted but has been ignored by transportation staff.

The SECONDS COUNT! ordinance does not specify any particular source for removal funding, but will not result in any tax increase. Current city plans are to budget $400,000 per year for traffic mitigation programs from existing sources beginning in 2001. And, over $493,000 remained in the transportation fund at the beginning of 2000 that was appropriated for traffic mitigation applications in previous years but not spent. Those sums are sufficient to cover the cost of removal without additional appropriations or service cuts.

Opponents of 2A overlook the $1.5 million staff plans to spend next for the Whittier neighborhood, adding 12 more traffic circles, 7 speed bumps, 8 entry medians, and 2 raised intersections. Also not considered is the liability exposure associated with installation of traffic devices of known hazard.

---------

Traffic device supporters testified that lower average speeds result in fewer accidents.

The Facts: Research does not support such a claim. The studies they refer to only evaluate the severity of injury versus speed. Obviously, the faster a vehicle goes, the more damage it can do in a collision with a pedestrian or another vehicle. But the frequency of collisions has more to do with the appropriateness of a vehicle's speed for the situation, including the complexity of cultural factors, visibility, roadside distractions, and so forth. In fact, there is considerable research focused on the 85th percentile speed, which is the speed below which 85 percent of drivers travel in the absence of enforcement at a given location. According to a Federal Highway Administration study titled "Driver Speed Behavior on U.S. Streets and Highways", by Samuel C. Tignor, Ph.D., chief of the Traffic Safety Research Division at FHA, establishing speed limits above or below the 85th percentile speed causes more accidents.

---------

One citizen attacked the SECONDS COUNT! analysis showing that the risk of death due to delayed emergency response in cases of sudden cardiac arrest was 65 times higher than that of a pedestrian being killed by a speeding car. Where, she asked, are the 65 dead bodies? In the same vein, Council member Havlick asserted that traffic devices in Boulder have saved many lives.

The Facts: The risk ratio does not imply that 65 people will die in any given time period in situations that can be directly attributed to delayed emergency response. Instead, by quantifying relative risk, it tells us that because these medical emergencies are so much more common than auto/pedestrian accidents, community-wide public safety is served better by rapid emergency service than by marginally slower traffic at isolated locations. Just as it may be difficult to point with certainty to delayed emergency response as a factor in a specific death, so too would it be impossible to prove that a specific life was saved because of a traffic device. But, the time will inevitably come, as it has in other communities, when deaths in medical or fire emergencies will be linked explicitly to delaying traffic devices.

---------

SECONDS COUNT! is a November 2000 ballot initiative by Boulder, Colorado citizens to prohibit traffic devices that delay emergency response. SECONDS COUNT! is online at http://www.secondscount.org.

# # #