Reclaim town streets as green space

Wilmington News-Journal
Thursday, Feb. 19, 2004

By Thomas Hylton

In her state of the state address last month, Gov. Ruth Ann Minner proposed a $22 million Green Infrastructure Program to protect Delaware's remaining green spaces and open lands. She noted the state has protected more than 4,300 acres of open space just since 2001.  

But a huge amount of public space, with vast, untapped potential to bring people together in a park-like setting, can already be found in every Delaware city and town - right under our noses. It's the street system.

Brandywine Park or Rockford Park will be visited daily by a few people, and weekly by more. But some may never stroll or bike through a park, even one close to their home. Most people, on the other hand, use streets every day. They're the only way to get from one place to another.

Streets are everywhere, of course, and they cover a substantial amount of land - about 25 percent of the developed land in many towns. So why not make the highest and best use of these public spaces?

For most of human history, streets have been gathering places where adults socialized and conducted business. Under the watchful eyes of adults, children used them as playgrounds. On some streets, the generous use of shade trees provided a green and tranquil atmosphere.

It's only been in the last century that we've allowed motor vehicles to completely take over our streets. To accommodate cars and trucks, we've widened our streets, and in so doing, sucked the life right out of our towns. We've also made our streets more dangerous, because wide streets encourage speeding.

Fortunately, there's a slow but steady movement to rethink our streets. From Florida to Oregon, streets are being redesigned to slow down traffic and make them more attractive to pedestrians.  

With large shade trees and appropriate landscaping, streets can serve as parks and greenways and still carry cars. Pedestrians can coexist with cars, as long as the cars are moving slowly. We do this every day in the parking lots of America. In commercial areas, streets can provide safe and convenient parking close to stores.

In European cities like Amsterdam and Vienna, space on the street is carefully allocated among pedestrians, bicyclists, trams, and cars, with ample shade trees to provide a green canopy. The French have artfully placed parking lots in the center of many of their boulevards, with tree-lined medians to separate pedestrians and parked cars from moving traffic.

The Delaware Department of Transportation has published a design guide on "traffic calming" to demonstrate ways local municipalities can make their streets safer, more attractive, and more efficient through better design. The agency is currently working on master plans to make it safe and attractive to walk and ride bicycles throughout the Diamond State, for the most part using existing roads.

One method, promoted by Dan Burden of Walkable Communities, involves transforming "fat" streets into " lean" streets by eliminating excess traffic lanes. From Toronto, Ontario, to Kirkland, Washington, former four-lane highways have been converted to two lane streets with turning lanes and bikeways that are safer, more pedestrian friendly, and carry the same volume of car traffic. These communities found that "road diets" have increased the value of adjacent properties, Burden says, and led to millions of dollars in new commercial and residential development.

Last spring, my town of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, began to reclaim our main street, High Street, as a hub of commercial and community life, starting with angle parking and bicycle lanes.  

Since George Washington's day, Pottstonians parked their carriages (and later cars) at an angle on both sides of the street. In the early 1950s, angle parking was eliminated to create two travel lanes in each direction and thus speed the flow of traffic. It did that, but it also eliminated parking spaces where they were needed most: in front of the stores. This change helped destroy downtown Pottstown's ambience as a shopping district.

By placing angle parking on the north side of the street, we've increased the number of parking spaces by 25 percent. Back-in angle parking is easier than parallel parking, because it eliminates the maneuvering needed to park parallel to the curb. It's safer because drivers can easily see traffic when they pull out.

Eliminating the second travel lane in each direction makes it easier for shoppers to cross the street, and creates space for bicycle lanes. The bike lanes also provide a place for delivery trucks to stop without blocking the flow of traffic. Cars and bikers go around them.

Although Pottstown has a new downtown park and borough hall, our showcase to the world is still our main street, just as it is in most towns. Through careful redesign, we can make our commercial and neighborhood streets a great place for people as well as for cars.  

Our next goal in Pottstown - planting high canopy shade trees in between those parked cars!