The High Cost of Wide Streets

[M II A II R II K]

The High Cost of Wide Streets


June 2, 2021

By Laura Bliss

Read More: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsl...ed-for-housing

Interactive Data Website: https://streetwidths.its.ucla.edu/

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It puzzled Adam Millard-Ball that people rarely questioned just how much space streets take up in the first place, especially in the U.S., where streets are much wider than in other parts of the world. A professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, Millard-Ball uses maps and datasets to understand city growth patterns at a large scale; his previous research has tracked the spread of urban sprawl around the globe.

- For his latest research, he acquired tax parcel data to calculate the widths, land areas and land value of streets in 20 of the largest counties in the U.S., which are home to some of the country’s highest-cost housing. What he found is hard to unsee: Across the 20 counties which include Los Angeles, San Jose, Phoenix, Brooklyn, Houston and Miami streets averaged 55 feet wide, even in residential areas where a single lane could accommodate traffic and cars are mostly parked in private garages. Some were much wider, like North Gramercy Place in Los Angeles (shown above), which measures 80 feet across. —

- In all, streets took up 18% of the total land area in these counties, ranging from 14% in Middlesex County, Massachusetts (which contains the suburbs of Boston) to 30% in Kings County, New York (which is Brooklyn). Millard-Ball estimated that the residential streets in that area would be worth $959 billion if they were instead zoned for single-family homes, based on 2019 prices. An accompanying website and map allow visitors to jump from county to county and see how wide and valuable local roads are.

- What else could be done with all of that land if it wasn’t locked up in often-empty asphalt? For one, cities could use it for bike lanes, transit, or green spaces, as many already are. It could also be used for housing, Millard-Ball believes. Similar to the way more cities are getting rid of minimum parking requirements, shaving down street standards could help reduce the cost of development, he said. While that might not be possible at scale in existing neighborhoods, cities could also allow owners to push property lines into streets to make way for front-yard ADUs or bigger, multi-family developments. And if that’s still too tricky, they could start by legalizing overnight parking for people who sleep in their cars and vans.

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In Los Angeles, wide streets are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per parcel. Adam Millard-Ball and and Eric Dasmalchi, UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies







Not all U.S. cities are alike. In Boston, narrower avenues like Elm Court are common. Adam Millard-Ball and Eric Dasmalchi, UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies

[Gantz]

Can't have narrow single lane streets in Brooklyn, since the cars are not just parked in garages. Cars are parked on the side on both sides of the street on all streets at all times (except on street cleaning days or construction work). There is not enough public transportation in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx to accommodate the population. They'll need to build a lot more subway lines if they want to get rid of cars.

[Doady]

On-street parking not only alleviates demand for off-street parking, opening up land for redevelopment and intensification, but it also provides a buffer between on-street traffic and pedestrians, allowing for sidewalks directly beside the street, and it has a traffic calming effect. In other words, wider streets actually save space and promotes density and walking.

[Atlas]

80 ft wide streets, huh? Rookie numbers. Salt Lake City's grid has standardized 132 ft wide streets. Blocks are 660 ft square, which is also the largest in the US.

It's a curse but could potentially be a blessing. In addition to having ample space for adding transit/bike lanes without affecting traffic, there has been talk in the past of adding development in the medians.

Video Link

[dave8721]

South Beach has obscenely wide side residential streets for such a dense residential area. They could be half as wide. Many were made wide because they used to have street-car lines running down them in the 1920s-40s. Now they are just wide strips of pavement.
https://www.google.com/maps/@25.7840...7i16384!8i8192

at least on Euclid ave they used some of the space to put in bike lanes: https://www.google.com/maps/@25.7844...7i16384!8i8192

[M II A II R II K]

That street averages at 70 feet wide and about $260,000 per parcel.

[Camelback]

The good thing about wide streets that were built in the post war era (and before that) is that cities can now reclaim some of that space for bike lanes, landscaped strips with trees, dedicated express bus lanes or higher capacity transit like a light rail system.

[Boisebro]

Originally Posted by Atlas

80 ft wide streets, huh? Rookie numbers. Salt Lake City's grid has standardized 132 ft wide streets. Blocks are 660 ft square, which is also the largest in the US.

yeah, that's one of the more jarring differences between downtown SLC and downtown Boise. I don' know how wide Boise's streets are, but I'm guessing about half that of SLC. plus, Boise's blocks are small... only 300 ft square.

put SLC's buildings on Boise's grid and it'd feel dramatically more dense.

can't wait to see those median high-rises pop up.

[eixample]

Another big problem is the width of individual lanes. Super wide lanes on residential streets encourages speeding since there is much more of a margin for error.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

[SIZE="5"]It puzzled Adam Millard-Ball that people rarely questioned just how much space streets take up in the first place, especially in the U.S., where streets are much wider than in other parts of the world.

It strikes me that people with those ostentatious hyphenated last names are frequently puzzled by things other people aren't.

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What else could be done with all of that land if it wasn’t locked up in often-empty asphalt? For one, cities could use it for bike lanes, transit, or green spaces, as many already are.

In San Francisco they are literally making possible the "parklets" for outdoor dining during covid times and now declared permanent if the owners want to keep them. They take up 2 lanes one on either side of the street, so that leaves just enough room on most streets for one lane of traffic in either direction, one of which is often blocked by delivery vehicles leaving one open for vehicles to pass.

When I've been in places with notoriously narrow streets, people commonly park on sidewalks and all sorts of other things that would get you towed in most US cities. Traffic laws are just suggestions in most of the world so they can do things you might not be able to do here.

I'm wondering how many tickets Mr. Millard-Ball accumulates per year.

[Camelback]

Originally Posted by eixample

Another big problem is the width of individual lanes. Super wide lanes on residential streets encourages speeding since there is much more of a margin for error.

1 to the double zeros! (100.) Those wide streets encourage speeding because they were so well built. Result cities spend millions to ruin those well built streets.

One of my biggest pet peeves as a motorist and homeowner, is that we paid for wide streets to accommodate fire trucks (zoning), then Waze, Google Maps come along and reroute traffic on residential some of those residential streets as short cuts that were never designed to handle the traffic load, so the city then spends more taxpayer money to install "traffic"humps" and/or worse "traffic circles".

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Camelback

so the city then spends more taxpayer money to install "traffic"humps" and/or worse "traffic circles".

Chicago has a damn near pathological obsession with putting speed bumps, traffic circles, and other traffic-calming devices on residential side streets to discourage thru-traffic and to keep dickwads from flying down side streets at 40mph.

My neighborhood's side streets are peppered with speed bumps like every 200 ft., and I fucking love each and every one of them! They work! There's no goddamn reason anyone ever needs to drive more than 15mph down a side street.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Chicago has a damn near pathological obsession with putting speed bumps, traffic circles, and other traffic-calming devices on residential side streets to discourage thru-traffic.

My neighborhood's side streets are peppered with speed bumps like every 100 ft., and I fucking love each and every one of them! The work! There's no goddamn reason anyone ever needs to drive more than 15mph down a side street.

I wish they'd install speed bumps in the loop! (but ok, they suck for buses... but there are bus lanes on enough streets it might work).·

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Chicago has a damn near pathological obsession with putting speed bumps, traffic circles, and other traffic-calming devices on residential side streets to discourage thru-traffic and to keep dickwads from flying down side streets at 40mph.

My neighborhood's side streets are peppered with speed bumps like every 200 ft., and I fucking love each and every one of them! They work! There's no goddamn reason anyone ever needs to drive more than 15mph down a side street.

I've never seen anyone "calmed" by these devices but I have seen people infuriated by them.

When I was pretty young, Baltimore, it seems to me, got it just right. They made it so you could drive nearly from one side of town to the other without stopping IF you drove just at the legal speed limit. Too fast or too slow and you ended up stopping at light after light. And it worked. I used to drive into town and through about ⅔ of it to my job with hardly a stop and no speed bumps.

Traffic circles, I find, though, are a different animal. Washington DC, when I was growing up as now, had/has many of them and they seemed a good thing. Much better than 4-way stop signs like in San Francisco.

Note: Arizona seems to be going for circles in a big way, even in some rural areas. As I said . . . a good thing.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I've never seen anyone "calmed" by these devices but I have seen people infuriated by them.

"Traffic-calming" has nothing to do with the emotional state of the human driver operating the car, it's all about preventing cars from being able to go fast down a street in the first place.

Speed bumps may be annoying, but they make perfect sense on side streets that aren't intended to have any thru-traffic in the first place. They keep impatient jack-asses from flying down our street at 45mph trying to use it as a short-cut or traffic work around. If they infuriate the people driving those cars, then the speed bumps have done their intended job splendidly!



As for traffic circles, I'm not talking about full blown British round-abouts that you're talking about. Chicago has none of those that I'm aware of (no space). I'm talking about little tiny concrete planting circles that are placed right in the middle of residential side street intersections to once again prevent cars from going fast (and to infuriate their stupid impatient human drivers). Though I heard that the city is now less eager to put them in because the fire department doesn't like them. Apparently they can make it difficult to get the big hook and ladder trucks through the intersections.

[dubu]

its a joke how many streets big cities have. my city has streets that end and turn into long walking paths.

[PHX31]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Speed bumps may be annoying, but they make perfect sense on side streets that aren't intended to have any thru-traffic in the first place. They keep impatient jack-asses from flying down our street at 45mph trying to use it as a short-cut or traffic work around. If they infuriate the people driving those cars, then the speed bumps have done their intended job splendidly!

I think you're talking about speed humps (much wider), right? No way Chicago has speed bumps (those narrow ones in parking lots) in the actual road.

Regardless, I'd almost guarantee you don't have a speed hump directly in front of your house, is that correct? They might be great at slowing down vehicles, but imagine living directly next to one and hearing vehicles bounce/clomp over the hump all day and all night, not to mention the immediate acceleration sound after rolling over them.

[Steely Dan]

^ i'm talking about good old fashioned axle-busting speed bumps, right in the middle of the street.

there's two of 'em on our block, the first one is like 4 buildings over from us. as for traffic going over them, the speed bumps are so obnoxious that it keeps the VAST majority of thru-traffic off of the street, one of the whole points of them being there in the first place, so the system works!

[PHX31]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ i'm talking about good old fashioned axle-busting speed bumps, right in the middle of the street.

there's two of 'em on our block, the first one is like 4 buildings over from us. as for traffic going over them, the speed bumps are so obnoxious that it keeps the VAST majority of thru-traffic off of the street, one of the whole points of them being there in the first place, so the system works!

WOW. I can't believe there are actual speed bumps in the road. Crazy! I might have to go look on street view.

That would be even more annoying and louder to live next to an actual speed bump. But, I guess it's a trade off.

My old street would get a significant amount of cut through traffic when an accident on the nearby arterial would occur. Thankfully speed humps were never a possibility. I'd never sign off on those. The city put in regular old traffic calming measures (small circles, narrowing) on the other nearby collector. That stuff is fine with me.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by PHX31

That would be even more annoying and louder to live next to an actual speed bump. But, I guess it's a trade off.

it's not annoying or loud when the speed bumps keep pretty much all but local car traffic off the street.

keep in mind, i'm talking about a quiet little tree-lined residential side-street, not a traffic-intensive major or mid-major street.

the best part? no more assholes blazing down the street at 45mph trying to shortcut their way around backed-up traffic on the major street two blocks over.