Urban projects should lure us out of our cars
and back on our feet

Don't remove essential trees as part of renewal plans

Harrisburg Patriot News
Sunday, Aug. 17, 2007

By Thomas Hylton

Everyone agrees it’s healthy for kids to walk to school.  Yet Pennsylvania school districts bus more than 75 percent our of school children to and from school, at an annual cost to taxpayers of more than $1.1 billion. 

This year, to encourage kids to walk to school, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation will allocate a modest sum -- $12.6 million – to selected municipalities for infrastructure improvements like walking paths and safe ways to cross streets. The program, called Safe Routes to School, is virtually the only funding for walking and bicycling in PennDOT’s $6 billion budget.

Small as it is, the program is terribly important. With skyrocketing oil prices and growing concerns about global warming, we need to encourage people to walk to as many destinations as possible.  Kids walking to school is a good place to start.

That’s why Camp Hill’s Safe Routes to School program is such a disappointment.  The borough has been allocated more than $1.5 million in state funds – a whopping amount for a community of just 7,600 residents – to make it safer for young pedestrians.  But instead of creating a model program that could inspire communities statewide, Camp Hill has done little more than establish a pork barrel project to provide free curb and sidewalk repairs for selected homeowners.

In many communities, kids can’t walk to school because the schools are isolated on suburban-style campuses.  Other communities have homes in close proximity to schools, but no trails or sidewalks connecting them.

Camp Hill doesn’t have those impediments.  All its houses are within walking distance of its schools, and it already has sidewalks on the vast majority of its streets.  Kids already walk to school.  And its sidewalks are already in better shape than most boroughs in Pennsylvania.  But Camp Hill could address the other major impediment to walking and bicycling – car traffic.  Nationwide, about 6,000 pedestrians and bicyclists are killed annually by cars, and the number one factor is speed.

In recent years, transportation engineers have increasingly promoted “traffic calming” devices to slow down car traffic.  Rather than simply erecting speed limit signs that motorists routinely ignore, “traffic calming” consists of physical changes to the street that force motorists to slow down.  They include vertical devices like speed humps and raised tables and horizontal devices like medians and roundabouts – all designed to reduce vehicular speeds.

Perhaps the best traffic calming device is the street tree.  Trees lining the street appear as vertical walls to motorists, inducing them to slow down.  They serve as a buffer between cars and pedestrians. In European cities and towns, which pioneered traffic calming, trees are planted right in the street to slow down car traffic and create inviting spaces for pedestrians.  Dan Burden, a leading expert on walkability who has consulted for PennDOT, says trees are an essential element of good traffic design.

Unfortunately, Camp Hill will not explore any of these creative ideas.  The lion’s share of its funding will go to fix broken sidewalks and curbing. Adjacent property owners, who are normally responsible for sidewalk repairs, will have the work done free courtesy of the commonwealth.  Moreover, to facilitate sidewalk repairs, the borough cited 15 property owners to remove mature street trees whose roots had grown too close to the surface.

The project is a good example of what not to do.  Pilot programs should enlighten and challenge us, not subsidize routine maintenance like sidewalk repairs. They should demonstrate ways to accommodate vital urban elements like trees, not bring about their removal.  

Pennsylvania’s fiscal and environmental health depends on fostering lifestyles that lure us out of our cars and back on our feet.  There are better ideas than the ones Camp Hill has offered – let’s hope PennDOT will seek them in the future.