Iconic, Quirky, or Ugly: Transportation in America

A site called MetaFilter recently posted the following question, “Calling all non-USAans: Can you give me some examples of tiny, weird things you discovered about the United States only when you got here?”  The responses cover many aspects of America life and are a lot of fun to read.  Sandwiched in with observations about bottomless cups of coffee, guns at Walmart, the diversity of choice in toothpaste, and the amount of water in our toilets, I found some useful reflections on our transportation system.  The following is a compilation of these observations, organized by topic.  The list is unedited so I apologize in advance for the occasional curse word.

Pedestrian Accommodations

• Drive-through everythings. Drive-through ATMs, drive-through bank tellers, drive-through pharmacies, drive-through liquor stores in some states. On the flipside, the paucity of sidewalks/pavements in many parts of the US, where your European would receive funny looks from his hosts if he suggested walking to a relatively nearby destination, and might even be stopped by the cops if they spotted him strolling along a residential area.
• Residential streets without sidewalks.
• The first time I tried to cross a road by myself, it took me at least 15 minutes to get the rhythm of the traffic lights and how much time I had to make it to the other side. Streets are a lot wider, so the timing is completely different. And the multi-lane intersections... aaah. So confusing.
• Jaywalking - seriously - you're going to ticket me for crossing the road?

Signs and Markings

• Writing on the road is the wrong way around: LANE BIKE not BIKE LANE.
• Oh, and the round things that mark highway lanes. Someone told me that the guy who invented them licensed them to the Dept of Hwys for 10c each. Whenever I go to the US, I try to count them and estimate his riches.
• From the UK: much greater tendency to use text on signs - in Europe we tend either to use graphics or not to bother with a sign at all.

Intersections and Right of Way

• Some places you can turn right on red -- wait what YOU CAN DRIVE THROUGH A RED LIGHT if you're turning WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE
• No roundabouts. Stop signs and the awkward negotiated dance of who has the right-of-way to go next.
• Four-way stops flummoxed me. As a UK driver I'm used to roundabouts where you know who has right of way. Working out who has right of way at a four-way stop is a recipe for an accident. (In Ohio, it appears, the truck with the biggest tyres tires has right of way.)

Freeways and Speed

• Speed limits that feel way too slow -- 35 limits would often be 45 or 50 or 60 back home. Freeway exits sometimes every quarter-mile -- UK motorways have very much fewer exits.
• The roads are just huge. A dual carriageway/divided highway is a big road in the UK, but it's every other street in Texas. Never have I seen so many huge, multi-level junctions

City Planning

• Cities where streets follow a grid. And almost all streets allow cars. As a European I'm accustomed to look for the city center; a place where there are no cars, where streets are meandering, where there are terraces to sit outside and have a coffee. A place that's amenable to walking, to hanging out and enjoying the atmosphere. I did not find such a space in the american cities I've been to. And it prevented me from enjoying the place.
• There isn't a pedestrian area in city centers where you can stroll between shops and cafes and not worry about getting run over by a bus.
• Lots of things that people have said above, but the thing that amazed me the most was going to places, large places, that have no center.  If you want a funny look, stop someone in Boca Raton and ask them where the main street is.
• Lack of sidewalks, even within large shopping malls (I have to drive in from the street? I have to DRIVE between buildings in the same complex?!)

Bicycling

• Riding a bike is dangerous and an enterprise, not a mindless means of transport.

Transit

• The buses in LA make a stop every block. During a one-hour bus trip, the bus might make 66 stops. That is more than a stop a minute.
• We were surprised to find that our neighbors had not only never used the bus, but they were scared to! This kind of attitude seems to lead to a viscous funding cycle for transit. In fact, people vote against upgrades to transit, because it might bring the riffraff into their neighborhood.

Vehicles and Parking Lots

• The cars here are huge! I've stood eye-to-eye with a bumper.
• And oh man the surbuban parking lots! Yeah everyone's heard of them, but nothing will prepare you for the overwhelming size and quantity.
• Stores have their own parking lot and you cannot run errands in medium towns without driving between different shops. 

The responses illuminate a lot of areas for improvement in the U.S.  However, having traveled abroad extensively, America doesn’t have a corner on the transportation quirks market.  Many countries need to work on their pedestrian facilities, rural roads, and vehicle interactions at intersections.  I almost fell through a hole on a bridge in Russia, took my life into my hands crossing a roundabout in Paris, and ran over a sheep’s leg in Ireland.  Nobody’s perfect. 

If you have a transportation quirk to share, either from your experiences in the U.S. or your travels abroad, please post a comment.



Poodles, Peer Pressure, and Product

Last month, something was amiss in the world of competitive dog shows.  The United Kingdom-based Kennel Club decided it was time to get tough and enforce their ban on the use of performance-enhancing products in dog shows.  They showed their teeth at Crufts, the world’s largest dog show, when they introduced random testing of the canine competitors for these banned products.  But the Kennel Club wasn’t testing for steroids.  No, the performance-enhancing products in question were just that – products, as in hairspray. 

Casually listening to the radio on my drive to work, this story caught my attention.  Sure, I allow my daughters to put an occasional bow or curler in our family dog’s hair, but I draw the line at product.  This hard-hitting issue was sandwiched between a report on the collapse of the Greek economy and the start of the new Supreme Court term.  The radio reporter interviewed Sandra Vincent, Secretary of the Standard Poodle Club of Great Britain.  Ms. Vincent was leading the pack of dog owners who did not consider the use of products to be cheating, “The bottom line is that we've always used hairspray.  We know it is against the rules but everyone has done it and done it very carefully. Whether you like it or not, dog shows are beauty competitions of sorts. [The ban] is like Miss World going in without her make-up on."

I was having a grand time listening to this story.  I was waiting for her to draw the obvious analogy to American baseball when she said something that caught me off guard, “It’s like speeding.  No one follows the speed limit. We know it’s against the rules but everyone does it.”  Drawing an analogy to beauty competitions or American’s favorite pastime was one thing, but Ms. Vincent was comparing breaking the rules at a glorified parade of family pets to an activity that contributed to over 10,000 fatalities last year. 

I don’t have an issue with Ms. Vincent.  I’m sure she is a nice, well-groomed person.  The truth is, she was right.  Speeding is ubiquitous.  Everyone does it.  Police officers charged with enforcement don’t enforce the posted speed limit.  If they did, the driving public would be up in arms, the media would jump all over the subject, and the judges would throw the citations out.  Instead, there is an unspoken threshold at which we consider speeding acceptable.    

On some level, all drivers make a calculation to determine our operating speed when we get in the car.  I think the calculation looks something like this:

                                                S = 1.1P + 3 – 4(W_z) – 7(S_z)

Where

                        S = Operating Speed in MPH

                        P = Posted Speed in MPH

                        W_z=1 if in an active work zone, 0 otherwise

S_z=1 if in an active school zone, 0 otherwise

For teenagers, the equation looks slightly different:

                                                            S = 1.1P + 5T

Where

                        S = Operating Speed in MPH

                        P = Posted Speed in MPH

                        T = The number of their friends in the car

I know my causal readers just glazed over (sorry Mom) when I introduced math to the discussion.  However, unless you are always staying at the speed limit or you are constantly getting tickets, you are doing this math to stay within the “acceptable” limits for speeding.  How did this collective math evolve?  We didn’t learn this calculation in driver’s ed class from the 1950s videos on the Smith System of Driving. 

I discussed this with my company’s president, Bob Brustlin, when he visited Raleigh earlier this week.  He had a similar thought that morning on his way to Logan airport.  Driving the speed of traffic, he passed a state trooper parked on the shoulder of the road.  He checked his speed – 80 MPH.  The trooper didn’t budge.  e waIf Bob had driven slower in the high-speed congestion, he may have caused a crash.  Similarly, if the state trooper pulled cars over, the same may have happened. 

All of this begs the question, When did speeding become the ultimate peer pressure?  And, the more important question, What do we do about it? 

How did the Kennel Club resolve the opposition to the enforcement of the ban?  They rolled over.  The ban was lifted.  Hairspray is now fair game.  I think I can hear Pascal (our family dog) running for cover. 

Please post your thoughts on these issues in the comment box.  I'd be particularly interested in thoughts (or equations) on how you select your speed in relation to the posted speed limit.

Looking for resources to reduce speeding?  VHB compiled a CD of resources on speeding for the Federal Highway Administration.  Email me (keccles@vhb.com) if you’d like a copy of the searchable CD or check it out online at:

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speedmgt/ref_mats/fhwasa09028/

The Importance of Strategy

The Military Civilian Workshop to Improve Highway Safety was held earlier this week at Fort Eustis, Virginia.  The Workshop is a tradition in Virginia, held annually for over 40 years.  The conference brings together what could be characterized as an army of partners in highway safety – military leaders, enforcement, first responders, engineers, media – to discuss strategic ways to improve highway safety. 

Military leaders may seem like unconventional partners in highway safety until you consider their responsibilities.  Many military bases are the size of small cities.  Fort Bragg here in my state has a population of 40,000 and covers 250 square miles.  Military leaders are responsible for safety on these large transportation networks within their bases and for the safety of their personnel (many of which are young, inexperienced drivers) as they travel outside the bases. Imagine being the traffic safety engineer for a town of 40,000 people where the average resident was under 25, single, male, and had a high risk tolerance.  It would be a challenging job to say the least.    

The two-day conference included numerous sessions to discuss strategic ways to improve highway safety on Virginia’s roadways, both on and off bases. 

The Workshop also provided the perfect setting to discuss Virginia’s new strategic highway safety plan.  States and some local agencies develop strategic highway safety plans to guide their safety improvement efforts.  The plans are collaborative and bring together partners from a broad perspective on highway safety, very similar to the participants at the Workshop. 

The following is an interview of Stephen Read, the Highway Safety Improvement Program Manager for the Virginia Department of Transportation and architect of Virginia’s new strategic highway safety plan.  The interview is conducted by Mike Sawyer, the former State Safety Engineer in Virginia and the architect of the previous strategic highway safety plan. 

These two Richmond gentlemen sat down over a glass of iced tea during a break at the Workshop.  Their conversation follows.

Mike:  Where do you see Virginia’s strategic plan headed and where is it at today?

Stephen: Like many other states, we’re in the process of updating our plan.  Our last plan had a four to six-year time period.  Ours has elapsed so we’re in the process of updating our vision, our mission, our goals and objectives, as well as our major strategies for our strategic plan. 

Mike:  How does the new vision or mission statement compare to the old plan?

Stephen:  One thing that has happened since the old plan is that there has been worldwide emphasis on the public health aspect of highway safety.  With international emphasis on working towards zero deaths (TZD), Virginia has adopted the vision now to look TZD; everyone should arrive at their destination safe and alive.  For our vision, we’re really working towards reducing not only deaths but serious injuries as well.  In our last plan we had goals and objectives that looked at all injury crashes.  In this plan, we’re going to look at those serious injuries that, without some sort of intervention in that crash, could have possibly been a fatality. 

Mike:  What are some of the key emphasis areas of this new plan?

Stephen:  Well, with the last plan the starting point was a lot of work from the late 90s that was more comprehensive in nature.  It had numerous emphasis areas that in some cases were overlapping or intermingled. With this plan, our attempt is to not leave these things off the table but to be a little bit more strategic on what we really think we can work on to drive the numbers down.  Our attempt is to look at 5 or 6 of those key emphasis areas.  Our last plan had 14 including two which were fundamental looking at the data and having good transportation safety planning.   Our hope right now is to go from the other 12, if you will, to get down to a targeted 6 emphasis area.  We looked at how each of those contributed to the deaths and severe injuries and decided on the new top 6 based on their contribution.

Mike:  What’s your schedule?  What are the next steps?

Stephen:  In September, we held Road Shows to educate folks about the plan, get their interest, and understand their issues with the emphasis areas.  We also asked them to get involved - review the strategies for the statewide plan but also think about developing regional plans and be involved at a more local level where they could target and develop more local plans within their own community.  At this point we have a list of folks, we have a governing body that we call the Steering Committee, and we’ve decided on leadership for each of the emphasis areas. 

We’re about to embark on a series of webinars and interactive dialog that will concentrate on the emphasis areas and strategies and also the potential actions that come out of those strategies.  Again, we want to refine not only the emphasis areas but also the strategies that come out of the emphasis areas so we can focus on the key things we need to be working on in the next five years.  The goal is to not put into the plan things that are actions or specific project or specific functions but to leave those more for the implementation plan in terms of the actions.

Mike:  Thank you for your time today.  It’s been great to hear what’s going on in Virginia.  We appreciate all your efforts.

Strategic, focused, and with an army of support, Virginia’s new strategic plan is on course to get more people home for Holiday Dinner every year. 

The Uncool House on the Block

Halloween is Monday.  Trick-or-treating with your kids is a great time for parents to reinforce good walking and crossing habits.  My daughter and I took a walk together this week to a local fall festival.  Although it was still daylight when we started out on our walk, I carried a small flashlight and dressed us both in turquoise jackets with reflective detail.  Always curious, my daughter asked why I had the flashlight.  I used the opportunity to talk to her about pedestrian safety, “I want the cars to see us.  The flashlight makes us more conspicuous, as do our brightly colored jackets.  Have you ever heard the word conspicuous or conspicuity?”  She hadn’t.  “Conspicuity is the ability to pick out an object from it’s environment or background.  I want us to be conspicuous so the cars can see us.”  I gave her another example, “The dog’s Frisbees are orange so we can easily find them in the backyard.    They’re conspicuous.  If they were green, they’d blend in with the grass.”  She was quiet for a moment.  I could tell she was thinking; she’s very smart at four years old and spends a lot of time throwing the dog his Frisbees.   I prepared myself for the intelligent question on conspicuity that I was sure would follow.  “Mom, will there be candy at this party?”

Where there won’t be candy this Halloween is at our house .  My husband assures me we’ll have to clean eggs off our cars on Tuesday morning if we don’t give out candy.  I’m not worried.  The decision not to give out candy was out of concern for diabetics, our youngest daughter being one.  I've contemplated all the possible candy alternatives: apples, pencils, stickers, pamphlets on pedestrian safety.  All of those would probably get our cars egged. 

Whatever we give out, we will have to have at least 100 ready.  Our neighborhood sees a lot of pedestrian traffic on Halloween.  Most streets in the traditional neighborhood are lined with sidewalks, one of the reasons we decided to live here.  The sidewalks, coupled with the closely spaced lots, make for ideal trick-or-treating on foot.   There are also lots of young families, many of which attended the fall festival like me and my daughter. 

The festival was a lot of fun.  We spent most of our time at the jump house and playing the carnival games.  We got a small bag of popcorn, but no candy.  As we were leaving the jump house for the final time, three boys raced by us, their arms aglow in bright neon.  My daughter excitedly exclaimed, “Mom, where did they get the bracelets?  I want a bracelet!”  I smiled – Glow Bracelets – the perfect non-candy alternative for Halloween.  We'll be handing them out on Monday.  Maybe our house wouldn’t be so uncool afterall, at least in this regard.  At the very least, the neighborhood kids will be a bit more conspicuous as they walk from one house to the next in pursuit of candy.   

I’ll let you know on Tuesday if there are any eggs on our cars.

A Family-Based Highway Safety Plan

What does a Family-Based Highway Safety Plan Look like?

My friend and colleague, Mike Sawyer, posed an interesting question to me yesterday:  What would a family-based highway safety plan look like?  Mike had been reading a safety management document from Europe and it spurred the thought.  He observed that the base unit of protection with most U.S. federal agencies was considered to be the family but the same was not the case for highway safety.  For example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has instructions for families to create an emergency management plan but for Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) the base unit was usually the state or local agency.  Federal guidance for highway safety is rarely provided at the family level.   The exception is behavioral measures such as the use of car seats – but as those of us in the engineering community know, that is only part of the solution.

I thought about his question for a moment and then realized that, although not formally documented, my family has a highway safety plan.  My husband, an economist by training, shares my interest in risk and understands that people often underestimate the risk of some behaviors (such as speeding or driving while fatigued) but overestimate the risk of other behaviors (such as avoiding red meat out of fear of contracting mad cow disease).  Over the years, we’ve had extensive discussions about highway safety risk which has culminated in our agreed upon protocol for transporting our family – effectively our family highway safety plan.

The following is my first attempt to describe our family highway safety plan.  As with most local or state strategic highway safety plans, our plan has four Es although slightly different. 

Exposure

The most important measure that we take to reduce our risk is monitoring our exposure.  We consciously try to reduce the number of miles our family drives in a year.  This was not born out of efforts to save gas or the environment (although both are worthy endeavors) but instead to reduce our family’s risk of a crash.  (As evidence of this, I’ve put less than 25,000 miles on my Subaru since purchasing it nearly five years ago.) 

Reducing our exposure means considering the following in our travel behaviors:

·         Trip Combinations.  Whenever possible, we combine trips so that multiple objectives can be accomplished from one destination.  The rise of mixed land-use development has helped us to do this.  We often frequent developments where, after parking our car, we can get dinner, pick up groceries, and allow the children to throw coins in a fountain.  (The added benefit here is that you only have to get them in and out of their car seats once.  Your back will thank you.)

·         Mail Ordering.  Mail ordering has become more prevalent with the widespread use of the Internet.  On our front porch the kids Halloween costumes, medical supplies, diapers, fall clothes for the kids, and an internet router all arrived just this week.  (A Fed-Ex package for the previous owner of the house also keeps showing up but that’s another story.)  I take advantage of free shipping whenever I can but I also know that the cost of shipping is small when I consider that it’s reduced my family’s exposure.  The drawback of this is that I get no less than seven catalogs in the mail every day.  The mailman is not exactly thrilled. 

·         Buying Local.  The large buy local movement is motivated by economic and environmental objectives however another benefit is that it means shorter trips or trips that are replaced by walking.  We live in a neighborhood that is close to downtown Raleigh and often walk to the post office, local pizza place, pharmacy, coffee shop, and bank.  With sidewalks leading to all of these places, a lot of our shopping is done locally. 

·         Parking.  Parking lots, although low speed, are scary places for me.  Most young children are not as tall as the hood of a car.  We try to find parking spaces that do not require crossing a road or busy parking lot, even if a long walk from our destination.  At some big box retailers, I find parking on the side of the building helps me to accomplish this goal. 

·         Flights.   Although rare, we fly whenever the trip is over five hours or so.  Although this is costly, the real benefit here, besides the reduced risk, is that you don’t have to hear “are we there yet?” as often and motion sickness is not as common.  (We didn’t take our own advice over the summer for a family reunion.  It took two days to get to Pennsylvania and no less than three of us were puked on by my four-year old.  I’ve learned my lesson.) 

Enforcement

As all parents know, whether we like it or not, part of our job is enforcement in the family.  At times I feel akin to a prison warden, particularly at church on Sunday morning, trying to keep the kids quiet in the pew like it is an hour-long jail cell.  Enforcement in our family highway safety plan includes the obvious monitoring of our children’s behaviors (e.g., you must wear your bike helmet or we take your bike away) but it also includes monitoring the behaviors of others responsible for their care.  We are very selective about who transports the kids, both walking and in the car.  When I was a child my dad would not let me or my siblings ride with my great-grandmother, Jessie.  She was 96 years old and at 4’11” she could barely see over the wheel of her 1970s Chevy Nova.  That one was obvious.  However, we’ve maintained tighter controls with our children and have extended our critique of suitable drivers to include behaviors such as whether they wear their seat belts, their cell phone use, speed selection, and use of defensive driving techniques.  At least one of the children’s aunts or uncles (who will go nameless) will never transport the kids based on their currently exhibited driving skills. 

Education

Children receive a lot of formal training on pedestrian safety both from their parents and schools.  For driving safety, the formal education does not start until the early teens.  The informal education starts much earlier.  Children learn from observing their parents.  Remember the first time you swore in front of your four-year old child or nephew?  Immediately they had a new vocabulary word that they wanted to share often and in public.  Similarly, children are observing our driving behavior.  It’s a good reminder to be better drivers: avoid cell phone use, use turn signals, keep our attention on the road.  For me, this means personifying the type of driver I want my girls to be when they turn 16 (or 25 if my husband has his way) every time I get in the car.

Engineering

Our route selection is based largely on the engineering of the facility.  We attempt to avoid roads where the design is not efficient for the prevailing speeds, roads with unfettered access, and rural roads that were formerly farm to market roads but now carry too much traffic.   When our trip is undertaken by foot, we only use routes that have sidewalks with good separation from the road and crossings that have appropriate measures such as sidewalks and pedestrian signals.  This means sometimes we don’t take the shortest distance between two points.  Probably not the worst thing for our health.

Our family highway safety plan continues to evolve.  Recently, my four-year old learned to open her own door and immediately tried the new skill out on the Interstate.  They keep us on our toes.  If you have a family highway safety plan or techniques to share, please post a comment or contact me via email at keccles@vhb.com.