Event ID:
1084918
Event Started:
7/23/2008 12:45:24 PM ET
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Basically improving the permability. The conditions in this neighborhood have improved. It was nothing more, there was no under pipes, it was just the removing of pavement.
Slide 23.This is more of a commercial street. Here's one where simple curb extension, or traffic chokers were incorporated. Those that are put on the at the ends of the street to slow cars down. The design here on this street was to take that same idea, give it this ecological function. Allow water to flow through, working with the slope of the streets.
Slide 24. Then going through a fill traitor process. You see the installation of that right now. These have become very popular. More neighborhoods are interested in installing them. It's brought a lot of neighborhoods that have become stewards of this. They provide some of the tending to the landscape. They're finding that the maintenance by the city is fairly minimal. It's taking about five minutes to scrape down it down. Very, very low tech solutions to problems.
Slide 25. You can see how this can start to improve the look of this neighborhood.
Slide 26. Here's some examples from elsewhere. You know the simple curbless street in California, the same principal is being used. Or even up in Wells, Maine. UsingThe idea of using Stonewalls. It's a sunken wall that provides some of -- one side of what we would consider a swale here. And craft and care in the building of the rest of that infrastructure. Incorporated into the character of the street, again, having this ecological function to it.
Slide 27. I'm not sure how this is looking on your screen here. I'll be looking at some photos of this later. This is a sandy boulevard in portland. This is a high-volume street. There were several of these remnant pieces of land they were able to take and develop into rainwater gardens.
Slide 28. Some examples of these gardens here. Otherwise they were just barren pavement.
Slide 29. Here a lot of people are going to be talking about costing. This is anecdotal evidence of cost savings. In places like this, there were some localized flooding. They did a cost comparison of what it would take to enlarge some of the pipes or put in new pipes or to start to remove some of the surface and replace it with gardens. They found the cost savings for the green infrastructure were much higher. For those of you that really need to have a cost number associated, I was provided the sum total of 25ed per square foot -- $25 per square foot. There you go, you have a hard number. One other note on this, this comes from discussions with portland folks. It's a cautionary tale, you get all of your folks together early on, coordinate them early. That will provide a lot of cost savings. Back tracking when you are 50% through design is very expensive. The final example, I have about five minutes left here, is one that looks at a neighborhood. This is the new Columbia neighborhood in portland. You can see the beigy road system that was there before. There's now interconnected streets and roads that provide better connectivity.
Slide 31. Within the new street designs there were 100 pocket swales, 30 flow-through planter boxes. A significant savings there.
Slide 32. This is some before and after shots of work that we have done in Covington. These are what I'm calling "what if." This is work completed by Kevin Perry. You see a significant impeerious surface here. Just imagining, if you double click on each of these slides you will see the after slides and what could be done.
Slide 33. We have other examples here of how to incorporate the tree planter boxes into more of a connected system, a swale system. And it can be incorporated into the adjacent neighborhood.
Slide 34. Before and after shots here. You might have to double click to get them both showing. Again, this is where the ITE journal, or ITE guidance will come in. Putting the roads on diet. And finding opportunities to start incorporating bike lanes. Looking at the street and looking at the specific travel patterns. Does it carry that much traffic? Does it warranty two lanes of traffic? Or is one fine with a bicycle?
Number 35. Looking out at some more of the low density options here. Heavyier arterials. I should drink some more water here. Again, achieving the goals of improved access for bicycle and pedestrians. As well as, achieving these environmental goals. I hope you are all getting the story that I'm telling here. Make one design and get as maximum benefit from it.
Slide 36. Again, does that sidewalk really, really, really need to be that wide? Probably not. It's important to have sidewalks. I'm not saying we should get rid of them. Let's do something else with that piece of the pedestrian realm that has this other function.
Slide 37. Before and after of, again, going through your cities and looking at those unused spaces. This is in Covington, Kentucky, again. Kevin Perry went through there, he was able to see there was a parking lot that had this angle parking and there was this unused space there that could be incorporated to start to handle the runoff for the parking lot itself. And by doing so it improved the looks between the sidewalk and the parking lot. Walking next to a parking lot on a hot day is not pleasant, as we all know. We have one more of these. I like showing these off. I think this gets the creative juices flowing. Again, replacing that mass surface with facilities that improve transportation, function for bicycles and pedestrians and have this environmental overlay, as well.
Advance to the last and final slide. This is book ending with the -- another philosophical bent here. I like this quote by Bruce Ferguson. It talks about how you, you know, solving these issues that are very important to us right now and we have to. They're becoming law. But how to take advantage of that and really start linking our cities and our developments to natural processes and just improving both the natural conditions and our cities. Which we shouldn't think of as separate, anyways. On this, too, I have a few minutes left -- challenges, there are a few. Typically I show here a cartoon that I like to show, I was told because of copyrights I can't show it, I'm now a federal government employee. I have to work with certain rules. It shows an urban sidewalking with ripped up, and pipes and utilities, just a maze of them. You look at that. You think in retrofit conditions that's a significant issue. The poor trees, you know, they have to be secondary, they get planted where there's leftover space. You know, certainly don't let them get in the way of parking meters. This is requiring this paradigm shift of giving as important due to green infrastructure and designing with that in mind. In cities now, like San Francisco for instance, a lot of their storm and drain pipes are Tarah cotta, they're 100 and they're failing. There's going to be a sort of redoing and retooling of the system there. Look at that at as an opportunity. You think about all of this infrastructure as one. Then, also, what I would like to say is there are no villans in this story. I think it's often stormwater or traffic engineers they get the finger pointed at them. I think that's a little unfair. In the past they've been charged with one issue, traffic engineers are charged with moving traffic. They've done that very, very effectively. The questions now, or you know, what they need to be told, you know, the issue has to be reframed. These professionals are very, very smart people. Let's give them another problem to solve. I think that that's where a lot of this innovation can come out. With that, I would just like to say let's reframe the issues. Let's be more inclusive of these facilities. And I would hope if I can came on here in two more years that we would see a lot more very interesting Casey studies out there. -- case studies out there. With that I will pass it back over.
Thank you, Clark. We will pause for some questions, if you move to slide 40. First I would like to apologize if some of you have experienced technical difficulties. The web cast server was subject to an attack. It should be fixed now. If you are having troubles you need to refresh the page. Now we will move on to questions. We'll begin with those submitted online. Can you submit questions online at any time by clicking on that question mark button. The first question is from Ann in Maryland. How does a community get started in making green streets? Should they revise their codes? Or do a demonstration project?
First of all, I'm a little freaked out we were attacked. You would think there would be other things that they would want to attack -- anyways. What can you do to get a green streets program started? Well, um, oftentimes it is a grassroots effort. You know, really making it known to policymakers and decision makers there's dissatisfaction. And you want improvements to your streets. Yes, the code revisions are very, very important. But I would actually suggest that you start on a smaller scale. And start with some sort of demonstration project. There's examples there in portland. The city of Chicago, even though large, they're starting with a green allies program. They're starting small with low-volume smaller networked streets of allies. They're going to incorporate these into those. It's the low hanging fruit approach. And then see what happens. There's going to be lessoned learned. Don't freak out if things don't work out right away with the first project. But, you know, learn from it. And then advance it. Learn thousand the codes -- learn how the codes need to be changed. Start with a demonstration and work towards policy.
Great. The second question is from Susan in New Jersey.
Why has portland had so much movement?
They've been on the forefront of a lot of planning issues. That's not just because of it's a feel good thing. They have real issues with water qualities and endangered species in their creek system. They have to be careful about the water quality going into their receiving streams, because they could be charged on a takings issue. Then, also, you know, they've had this big lesson too about their combined sewer overflow. They've had to incorporate these, this massive infrastructure to take care of some of those -- to take care of that overflow. They've learned their lessons that it really costs a lot if you don't think from a watershed approach. There's great leadership and designers there that have shown how beautiful it can be. That picks up the momentum.
Thank you. Our next question is from David in Rhode Island. Do you have suggestions or examples for how communities can overidentifying overlapping benefits of green streets?
I think, you know, a lot of those, just "imagine if" kind of slides. Putting a tree lawn, or a strip of trees what will that do as far as water interception? And then -- also improving the pedestrian realm. What if we put in stormwater infiltration pits that have trees growing out of them? That provides opportunities for increased looks in the community. Improved pedestrian realms. I think, once you start sort of thinking about all of the benefits that you want in your streets, I think, even if you are not a designer you can imagine how working together you can, or working with all of the goals together you could come up with a cool design.
Our next question is from Kristin in Oklahoma. Why should a city focus on green infrastructure for streets instead of for new developments or other properties? Renal.
I'm not saying it should be one over the other. You know a lot of times we look at wide streets, we think that's term, those are so wide. I look at them and think that's a lot of public space there. There's a lot of opportunities to do a lot of things within that right of way. By no means am I saying focusing on the streets is saying you don't focus on new development.
Thank you. Our next question is from Nina in California. Can you do green streets with infiltration in places with poor draining soils?
As mentioned I'm managing that a lot of the soils in California that you are talking about are these clay soils. Clay soils do have some infiltration capacity. But then there are possibilities of in confined situations of doing underdrains. I know this is contentious with several folks. It doesn't necessarily reduce the volume of water. That leads to issues of hydromodification. You can still scour things out. But I think there are opportunities. And then if they're really, if it's hard panned then, you know, as I said earlier infiltration basin is not the right approach. Maybe it should be more detention, or water harvesting, or conveyance through a swale or something like that can allow it to evaporate or take it to another location. Again, not one size fits all.
Great. Thank you. Our next question comes from David in Arizona. What would you recommend for and arid region like Phoenix?
Yes. That is actually, I have been in contact with a researcher that I know. They're looking at options in arid environments. A lot of the options looking at there relate to water harvesting. I did work in Phoenix. I know the ramifications of doing detention on site in places like Arizona. You do get that massive rainfall all at once. You sort of, you see these very deep detention basins between the public sidewalk and the development there. And not the most comfortable walking environment. But then I've seen some innovative building designs where they've incorporated sis alternatives terns into the architecture. It is something that I'm interested in researching further, because we would like to see how this approach can work with all different green ecosystems.
It looks like one more question. It is from Amy in North Carolina. Who maintains these vegetated systems in the right of way?
It depends on the location. In some of the smaller residential streetsing like in portland you have neighborhood groups taking care of them. Along the sandy boulevard there the parks and rec department take care of them. It makes sense. They're the plans people. The transportation folks don't deal that much with plants. And then this is also where this kind of bridging institutional Barriers has to come in. Having value to the tree, having value to the plants, that they're worthy of having a true maintenance program. I can tell horror stories about places that do not have a maintenance program. It's not on their radar screen about the true benefits that the trees and plants have in being a piece of infrastructure. My feel something within the public realm it should be on the larger streets, that it should be the responsibility of another body. Who that is -- maybe it's not formed yet in several city departments.
Thank you, Clark. It looks like we have time for a question from the phone lines. At this time I will ask anyone on the phone lines to unmute yourself and give us your name and organization. Any questions?
Cindy, city of Modesto. A question about an early slide. There's a couple of figures that show some houses and the density there. In the runoff and the [ Indiscernible ] cover, was that including only the hard escape associated with the house, or also the streets and the roads and that sort of thing?
For this study it was included the hard scape associated with the dwelling. You can imagine the driveways and the roads with the more dispersed development that is being shown.
Thank you.
Thank you, Clark.
At this time before we move on to our next section of today's presentation, I'm going to ask that everyone please move with me to slide 41.
The watershed academy team will be taking a much welcomed vacation in August. We will be back in September. Please visit our web page for more information about future webcasts. At this time we will move on to our final section, take it away.Ellen? Go ahead and hit that little code that we practiced.
Hi, this is Ellen greenburg. Clark, that was a great presentation and a good starting point for the material that I will present. My presentation is titled "emerging priorities and emerging practices." As Clark pointed out we're looking at the beginnings of a lot of changes in the way public agencies are designing, implementing and managing their streets. The material I will present is the result of about a year's worth of research at the sustainable [ Indiscernible ] center at UC Davis. This work has benefitted from contributions from staff at public and private organizations. I want to recognize their contributions. We would never have been able to put together this information without their assistance. If there's anyone on the phone who was one of our contributors, thank you very much. Just want to recognize the help and the support from public and private organization personnel.
Just to give you a little bit more information about this project and you be able to get further information from the UC Davis website. This is auto project that is trying to highlight connections between urban street design and sustainability. We're doing by documenting projects, gaining an understanding of the state of the practice and how we can start thinking about streets and sustainability and what these different relationships are. We'll look at some of those in the following slides. We're trying to understand what the state of the practice is. And what additional kinds of techniques and information need to be available for people involved in design and decision making. And we're taking part in education and outreach like this. I hope that you will make a connection with the website at UC Davis and information will be added to that site over the next few months. There's a pretty rich body of information.
The material I have put together for this presentation is abridged. But more project information and images on the projects I willer surveying today will be available on that Davis website.
Slide 4 3. This provides a very basic definition of sustainable streets. Clark's presentation was focusing on the issue of stormwater, rainfall, snow melt. But my interest in this issue is multifunctional nature of city streets. We're trying to highlight opportunities and challenges associated with framework of a multifunctional street and streetwork and how people are respond to go that idea. We're looking at the idea of sustainable streets and how to define that. And starting off with this provisional definition, which says that sustainable streets are rights of way designed and operated to create benefits related to movement, ecology and community. And this definition is presented with the idea of aligning with a broad sustainability agenda that looks at environment, economy and equity. And the project that we've looking at really focuses on the design of the street. But we recognize that there are a lot of other opportunities for people that work with streets to address sustainability objectives. All really through the whole life span and stages of the streets there's objectives. This work is focused on the design phase of management of the street. So our definition suggests there's these three themes of movement, [ Indiscernible ] and community. The next series of slides looks at the meaning of each.
Slide 43. -- I'm sorry, slide 44. This talks about what is the role of the street in movement? This is among the most fundamental jobs of the street. We're interested in all street modes and all kinds of travel for different purposes and trips. And one of the things that we saw in surveying different projects by a whole big range of public agencies is there's work on street design that is not just trying to improve the environment of the street, but trying to create settings for improved travel performance. Which means the street is being seen as a place to support a community that is trying to gain mode share, in terms of walk, bike, transit trips. So the street there is seen as part of this broader vision, or attempt to change traffic behavior. We will talk more.
The next slide looks at the question of how you actually bring movement objectives into the design of the street with different features. If you advance to slide 45 you see the simple boxes. On the left-hand side you see movement objectives that cities are trying to achieve. And they have them in place when redesigning streets. Reliable and convenient travel, independent movement, overall a high level of accessibility and emergency vehicle access. With this list we're getting far beyond just thinking about how the street operates in terms of ecological functions. And reaching towards a multifunctional approach. This supports Clark's comments, the need to work across disciplines and across function areas in your agency to have people from different departments and different entities involved. The box on the left is a list of objectives that you might want to achieve relative to movement. The box on the right are the features that you might see associated with street design. The first is highly connected and multimodal circulation network. Mixed land uses. Vehicle speed that is compatible with the urban place that you are connecting. And facilities for transit use, for bike and for walking. Those are basic movement features. If you think about some other opportunities that are developing over time we can get into some more creative thoughts about street features. Clark and I saw a presentation from Washington D.C. last week, we noted they're used street space for their now shared bike program. We're looking at the need to integrate bike storage into street space. We may be seeing storage and fueling stations, or charging stations for vehicles in the public right of way. As technologies change we may be working with different street features to accommodate them. There's all kinds of opportunities in the area of movement and design.
Slide 46. We move on to ecology. Here is a very basic statement. A photo from new Columbia in portland. Establishable streets protect and enhance natural resources and processes. That's pretty stright forward. There's two aspects to this. Clark focused on one of them, which is the resource value of landscape and natural elements within the right of way. We can use the space differently. We can improve the functioning of the whole system with the way we treat the right of way space. That's one area that is receiving a lot of attention. That's why most of you logged on for the presentation today. But the second dimension of ecology with respect to street design is there's a range of ecological processes that are feted by the movement -- affected by the movement system. It's something we don't think about that much. We're all, of course, very familiar with the fact that vehicle operations have an enormous impact on air quality, Walter quality and climate. There are a second set of ecological processes that are affected through the movement impact and movement impact of the street. If we can create streets that support places where there's a higher walk or bike share, lower per capita vehicle miles traveled those changes will support water and air quality improvements. We have that set of two different potentials.
Slide 46. I'm sorry, slide 47. That slide mirrors the earlier movement slide by looking at objectives on the left-hand side and features on the right-hand side. We will be looking at a number of other project examples. Some of the projects we'll look will have these features that direct the direct ecological impacts. We'll look at some that are offering the potential to have indirect effects, rather than direct ones. The third area is perhaps most complicated, which is the area of community objectives. And this is very much interwoven. Ecology and movement goals are among community goals. Just as goal force economic success are community goals. The movement of objectives are so fundmental to all of this. We can't have a successful community or a successful economy without having a level of mobility that is satisfying to people's needs. At one level this is all bundled up. For this purpose we're making these distinctions.
Slide 48, some of the concerns relating to community. Again, there's a direct and indirect component. Number one talks about using the street and the design of the street and the way it's managed to contribute to social economic, public health, culture. The second, is using the street to support urban development patterns that reinforce movement and ecological goals. These are some really big aspirations, right. Things that are hard to achieve. You may wonder how they can be addressed through the design and management of the street. The social dimension, a key element there is the use of the public right of way for public gathering, for community functions. One of the things we looked at was the use of street space that is designed to program activity. We looked at streets that are being modified in cam bring, Massachusetts. This is a picture of a festival street in portland. The public gathering is important from the social perspective. On the economic side there's been a lot of interest in the use of street scape. And in creating business districts where there's a lot of pedestrian. There's been work to try to quantitify those values. On the public health end this is important relating to traffic safety, and supporting higher levels of physical activities. Cultural needs really address the beauty and the quality of place and the distinctioniveness of the environment. The reason I put in the reference to environmental justice here is that we have, I think, a history of which we should not feel proud of making streets in parts of our community much better designed and much more multifunctional than other parts of the community. We also have record of traffic safety that is not, you know, it's not equal for people of different incomes. And people living in different neighborhoods. We can use our street programs to equalize benefits.
Slide 49. You see some of the community features. You can see examples of these later. It has to do with place making. Again, public health and social outcomes, creating value for businesses. One of the thins we highlight on the right is what right sizing roads. Making roads promote for their -- promote for their surroundings. That's a whole perspective on community that is really added on the ecological and movement functions. We will talk about how these different goals actually function in terms of the mechanisms of accomplishing them. These work in different ways to accomplish sustainability objectives. I like to draw attention to the fact that some features in the street bring about results directly, and others don't. We're working with professionals from different disciplines when we work on street design in this way. And there's -- some people are familiar with some techniques and some people are familiar with others. There's a level of teaching. I want to introduce you to two terms. One is the term catalyst. I use it as in the chemistry field. The other term I use is the term compliments. They're external factors that increase the reliability or the strength of a response. Now we will look at two examples. Hopefully they will help to light up the challenges and opportunities. If you look at slide 50.
This is kind of a diagram about ecological features and outcomes. I will direct your attention to the right-hand side we're looking at a list of desired outcomes. This list includes reduced pollutant loads. Reduced rerowings and temperature impacts of urban runoff. If you are focused on those outcomes you might consider using features such as those listed on the left-hand side. You could continue and make a bigger list here. What this slide is showing is that there are intermediate effects created by these street features. And that when these features are properly designed and maintained that the red arrows signify is there's a direct connection to these affects. This season example of a very -- this is an example of a straightforward process of using features in your street design to lead you to desired outcomes.
On the next slide what you see is a more challenging outcome desired. It's more challenging because it's associated with a more complicated process. On the right column of this slide we see the desired outcome is reduce vehicle miles traveled, increase physical activity, there's a whole set of benefits associated with that, including benefits to water quality because of the reduced emission. Have a look at the left-hand side. What are the features if you are a street designer that you would think about putting into place in order to reduce vehicle miles traveled? You would probably focus on facilities for nonmotorized transport. In this case we can't put in these big happy red arrows that go to the outcome. They're a catalyst as well compliments. If you put in your facilities for nonmotorized transport you have to still rely on the response from the users of these facilities. The human beings that need to make a choice to bike or walk. This may seem, you know, very obvious. I have found it bears restating. Those catalysts also have complements. The complements relate to the land use pattern that is supported by the street system. If you put in your sidewalks, you need users to use them you will make that choice much more likely if you are a place where their walks can be short convenient. Then you get the mobility outcome. One of the reasons -- the reason this is so important, to recognize the catalyst and the complement is to change travel behavior, not just to change the way the ecology of the street itself functions, efforts to design streets properly really need to be part of a much broader sustainability. That's the way that these other elements start to be put into place. That concludes the conceptual part of the presentation. I will now go on to show you examples.
You will see some examples that I think are impressive. You will see some where you will see some missed opportunities. There's lots and lots of agencies that are really in the early days of this work. It's very much still developing. I'm sure you all appreciate that. The questions we got reflected that. This is the beginning of a new practice.
If you will move on to slide 62. Four themes of sustainable streets. These are themes that emerge from a set of about 50 examples that our research uncovered and people were kind enough to contribute to our work. None of them address only a single element, there were dominant theme in most of the examples. That led to this grouping. The first set have stormwater management as a primary objective. We use the word "plus" to convey the fact there's additional objectives in every case. There was a question about cobenefits. You will see some of the cobenefits. I hope these illustrations will be helpful in providing information. The second set is oriented to context more than a specific objective. These are higher volume streets. There's a lot of interest in how to treat larger streets to incorporate these functions and to contribute. We separated out the bigger streets. The third set focus on downtown review taelization. In these cases the projects are in mature communities, older communities, they're using it as a spur for economic activity. It's a more scorch comprehensive approach. The fourth category are redesigned and new neighborhoods that are addressing these three sets of themes.
Slide 63. You will see a list of what we call our album close ups. We chose about 12 that we collected detailed information for. We had a lot of cooperation from the sponsoring agencies and the designers. I'm going to give you what is an overview of these projects. There will be additional information online. Please follow-up if you would like more information on these.
Slide 64. This is an image of one of the portland projects that Clark mentioned. 12th avenue. This starts off our stormwater management slides. What I wanted to mention is when did this survey to professionals. We said tell us about how you are creating sustainable streets. The recipients associated that phrase with stormwater. That included landscaping and use of pervious paving. Of the whole web of issues related to street design and sustainability best management practices for stormwater are the most clearly identified. We got quite a bit of material on this topic. And less on the movement and the community aims of streets. Someone had been asking where you do start? I'm afraid that the slides on this project have lost their images. But this is an example from Oregon of a locality taking a modest start by working on a local street to implement a pilot project that uses different techniques. They've installed three blocks of a suburban [ Speaker/Audio Faint or Unclear ] and sed men taigs control measures. On the next slide you can see a quote from one of the agency staff people who explained how they're using this approach to start off their new program of green streets. They saw this as giving them a chance to experience design and construction on a really small scale and look at the costs. To get some environment benefit. But also as community education activity and an experiment. That's kind of an example of a very small scale effort, but a meaningful one in terms of a local government testing something out with public awareness component as well as. We found a public education component in this next project.
Slide 57. I like this quote, once we're solving one issue let's solve multiple issues. Back to this issue of cobenefits. This is a seven-block area. It's through the downtown financial direct. It has a redesign of the roadway that reduced the number of travel lanes.
You can see a closeup of the rain garden there. And new trees. This street this been bare before. From this setting to a residential setting.
Slide 59. This is a subdivision that was designed with peiveious paving and rain gardens fully integrated into the site design. The project designers were working to comply with certain requirements from the city that if handled conventionally would have had an impact on the number of unions. They were looking for a cost-effective solution from the revenue side from the project and offering the stormwater benefits.
Slide 60. You can see the site plan for this project. And see how the paving and landscape dimensionses are integrated.
Slide 61. It repeats the text from slide 59. Going to make a few concluding comments about the stormwater projects. Another type of project that we're seeing, I don't have slides on it here, we're seeing work with green building techniques are integrated with green infrastructure. We have an example from Seattle of a private development project that is also redesigning the street. You are seeing this fuller incorporate, green building, green infrastructure, that's an exciting piece of progress. Information on that project, which is called Taylor 28, in Seattle, will be available on the UC Davis website. Our next section is about the higher volume streets that I mentioned earlier.
Slide 62. Clark already mentioned sandy boulevard in portland. I'm going to talk about two examples. They're very different. Of the projects we received on higher volume streets there are two types of projects that are worth differentiating. One set of projects are remedial projects that took awful streets and made them safe and multimodal. That's an important kind of project. Given that we have a lot of streets that are not safe for pedestrians and don't have basic landscaping. That's an important type of project. But it can be contrasted with projects where the street is part of a vision of a different kind of city place. I will show you examples of one of each of those projects. The backround of this slide is aurora avenue in shoreline, Washington. While we sometimes look for before and after pictures, this is an in and out. One mile of this street is improved. And most of the street is still pretty dismal.
You can get a good sense of what I mean when I say dismal. I'm now on slide 63. It describes this project. Very high volume route with transit and high truck volumes. In the prior Encarnacion this was one of the lacks of the street. This was undertaken with the [ Indiscernible ] solutions process.
You can see the conditions that were in aurora avenue before the project. We have to note that conditions persist outside of the project. I wish I would expect this would be unfamiliar kind of picture to the audience today. I bet that lots of you come from agencies with facilities like this. There's one of reasons there's competition for funds to improve the streets. And because of the public safety issues really do dominate a lot of the agendas. This project included stormwater features and public safety improvements and many other elements. It's a very thorough undertaking and very comprehensive with respect to the right of way and the movement function. This project didn't attempt any changes in the community function, or the land use context of the street.
Slide 65. Then we can go to the second big example.
Slide 66. This is the project of our entire sample that had the highest density development context. You can see the residential towers. This is the falls creek neighborhood of Vancouver. The street is being redesigned following the reconstruction. The street design is seen as pour supporting this area. It's the other kind of project, very different from the aurora avenue project.
More sharply the residential towers. You can see the cross section of the street. What you see here is there's an unusual design for the street. The designers have put in a local access lane, so that drop off, pickup, happened in this protected curb lane. Then it comes in and joins the through traffic on the center lanes. This is a case where the street design is very much integrated in with change in land use and where there's an expectation over time there will be -- this impact on vehicle miles traveled in terms of creating an urban place that like much of the rest of Vancouver performs well in terms in mode, [ Indiscernible ] and travel behavior. That's our look at big streets. One of the streets in the next category also qualifies.
Slide 68. We're going to touch on three examples. All of these projects are focused on smart growth principals. In each of these projects street design is used as a key element of intensification and the create of walkable urbanism. None of these projects focus explicit on ecological objectives. You will see some of involve significant new plantings and reduction of inpervious surfaces. The first project is part of a very major civic effort of downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee. This project was a redesign of their river front parkway and changes to several downtown streets. The dramatic change here is the river parkway was rebuilt to change it from a limited access facility to a city street. On the next slide --
Slide 70. There's a quote from one of the city staff. I like this. He says before it felt like a highway, now it feels like a road through the park. Other cities do have these ugly highways. This is an interesting example. To see how a city really remade a water front facility. They did it with the addition of new intersections. And the creation of a wide promenade on the river side of the street. They've also made development opportunities. They're working on stimulating economic activity and new development in the city's downtown as part of this effort. Downtown redevelopment is at the core of the motivation for the city of San Jose.
The next slide is from San Jose. There's a very unusual street design that accommodates light rail. In this design the light rail vehicles are part of the pedestrian realm. You see no coming off the vehicle into the street. You come off of the vehicle on to the sidewalk and the vehicles run between these two rows of trees. This is an example where a city redevelopment plan that was seeking to bring jobs and housing into downtown including redesign and rebuilding of the streets in order to support transit. It's a movement focus. It will mean environmental benefits that are derived from changes in movement patterns.
The next example is on slide 72. It's from liver Moore, California. It's in the far east bay in the San Francisco bay area. This is also a very unusual design. It's really focused on bringing value and activity to a downtown area.
Slide 73. The designer's view that a challenge is to achieve successful relationships between people, cars and our built environment. This design, I'm going to ask you to back up to 72.
You can see how the design works better. What this design does is create an area is called a flexible zone. The parking space can flex back and forth. Add that to the person oriented space of the the street. It slows down movement on the street. It creates space for local merchants to take advantage of additional space. This is a really innovative design. It's a way of saying look we're putting this emphasis on the quality of our environment for the community. The movement function is taking a back seat, though it does still exist.
The last set of projects have a neighborhood focus. Slide 74. TheseThis first slide and the next one are from Newportland. The reason I think that new Columbia is a project so worth noting is the sustainability objectives were the second tier objectives. The first tier of objectives were to create a mixed use community. So this project very much represents a real comprehensive approach to smart growth. All the way from a variety of housing types and prices to these stormwater features. It's worth learning about, and worth visiting. It was a treat to see it. This project which is close to downtown portland is contrasted with the next neighborhood, which is Pringle creek.
Slide 76. It's a low impact development that is now under construction. The sustainability qualities are very much part of the marketing of the project. It is a sustainable community.
Slide 77. Perspective from the developer. They're integrating the design with the overall marketing and identity of the community. It was pointed out to me that the streets there are privately owned as part of the development. They're doing some inconventional things with the design.
The third example is an Canadian example. Slide 78. It's of interest because this is an old military property called garrison woods. The density was tripled. One of the elements supporting the tripling of the density was a change to the street plan. Uniquely design each of the streets. The developers of this project rejected the idea of standards. These folks said we don't want to work to standard. We want to look at what is on site as far as trees and views and access to the surroundings. We want to design the street system to be responsive of the site and the development program. And really make the streets unique. That's really a very different approach to the street plan in this neighborhood.
With that I'm going to just wrap up some comments on slide 8.
Three areas where I think there's work needed and help for practitioners needed on moving aheld. One is that these objectives do require some new design techniques and exploration and answers to technical questions. To highlight an area that some of you may have grappled with before, a lot of interest in increasing the number of trees in public right of ways. There's in many communities many agencies have spent attention with highway or street agencies about trees in the roadside and the dangers they're thought to pose.Increasing research activity around these will shortly be able. Similarly, some new planning tools. I have been experimenting with functional. Along with mobility priorities and other tools that agencies can use to look at these practices.
With that I would like to wrap wrap up for questions. Slide 81 has my contact information and the UC Davis website. Again, we'll be adding information to that site in the next couple of weeks. I welcome your questions.
Thank you, Ellen. We have time for some questions. However, let me first show you the contact information. You can click on the home at the top of the screen. You will see the speakers' email and phone numbers.
Slide 83. Our link for additional resources and the link for our evaluation form. For those of you on loin look at the left-hand side. There's a links button that has additional resources. Also you should see a feedback button. Please take a minute to submit the feedback form, we do value your comments. At this time we will move on to questions. We're going to begin with those online.
Our first question comes from [ Indiscernible ] in mayorland. The question is a coalition of partners is at the beginning stages of a rain scaping campaign. Can slides be used?
Yes, can you. This presentation along with other 30 other watershed academy webcasts are available for download at EPA.gov/webcasts. We ask you that give credit to the U.S. EPA and the author of the slides that you are using.
The question is from Karen in Oklahoma. On the Kansas City slide how does the water get to the trees and the rain garden?
I'm going to transfer my attention to that slide. I recall there's an inlet in that curb where the water will flow. There's a forebay where the debris can gather to be cleaned out. I think you are referring to slide 58 in your question. If you look at the back of that planter box. I think it's a question of the angle of the boxes. The photo on the left is the rain garden. The tree boxes, I think, do not have a similar mechanism. They're functioning in two different ways. The tree boxes are just adding pervious surface without the whole filtration affect of the left-hand side.
Thank you. The second question is from Betty in Boston. How are the cities funneling these projects? Is it local? Or is there federal money involved?
There's a big range of funding techniques. It's been interesting. I should let folks know that the EPA is looking into a question of institutional arrangements. It's varied. The city of Washington D.C. is using revenue from bus shelter advertising. And other cities applying for specific funds through state or federal sources for the projects. It really runs the gamut. Some of these projects have very modest. Others are very significant, requiring ongoing revenue. There's not one answer. Some of the projects within private developments are self-funded. A big range of answers. EPA will have some more information when this new project is completed.
Great. Our next question is from Kevin in Canada. Can someone speak to the design concept of [ Indiscernible ] a Dutch term for a slow moving shared street. Can someone speak to their concept and how they're integrated into residential development to accommodate stormwater and mow built equality?
Um, I'm not familiar with how they've been used for stormwater. I will ask Clark if he's familiar with that while I make a comment. What I see is that they're looking at the local street. On the local street the emphasis should be on community. And because traffic volumes are low and speeds should be low you often do have an opportunity to dedicate space to ecological functions. It makes sense to me there would be an opportunity to address stormwater functions. I have not seen that at work. Clark?
Yeah. I'll add to that. The consent is very much of a European concept. I have talked to different teem in the know about -- to different people in the know about that. Can you make the connection to things like the Chicago green allies program, or environments like that. They're slow moving, providing access for vehicles, but also providing some open space. The use of permable pavements are necessary. On a slow moving street you want to put up obstacles. You see some in the Japanese examples, or European examples of tree pits put in a pattern to create a weaving form.
Our next question is from Megan in Vermont. Anything special done to allow the trees on the San Jose slide to function with such a small tree ring or well? I thought a challenge was that you had to have enough sidewalk to have enough "open soil" to adequately irrigate the trees and not compact the soils too much. I'm wondering if the paveed surface is somehow different, thank you.
It's an older project. In newer projects I have seen structural soil it's that designers are using in cases where their space is constrained. I don't have information about the specific techniques used in that case. I believe you are certainly connect about this being a concern and a challenge. Particularly in places where there's a lot of demand by users for and different functions. Clark?
Yes. I have been seeing more landscape details now. The actual paving surface is suspended above open soil below. There's no compact tion. There's enough pour capacity that allow for soil and water and air to get through them. To allow the roots to expand. But there's also a design detail where there's a structure below the sidewalk that kind of keeps the paving above the plant the area. As long as they're enough space for irrigation, water and the tree trunk to poke out of the hole, and that the caliber of the tree is not one that will be get strangled. Enough air and water gets down there.
Great. Thank you. It looks like we have two questions for Clark. The first is from Lauren in Louisiana. How do we get the tool box in northern Kentucky has?
We're hoping to have that available on our smart growth website by our new partners conference in January. Look for it in January.
And from John in Maine. Why is there a storm drain on that first photo of a sustainable street?
We're trying to identify which photo you are referring to. There's one in the new Columbia neighborhood. These type of facilities do not replace flood control issues. This is water quality issues. The point is that you want to intercept and deal with a lot of the smaller storms, about 80% of the smaller events that can be taken up and infiltrated into the landscape. The bigger events you still need to have the overflow capacity that the storm drains provide.
Great. At this time I will unmute the lines. If we have questions from the phone please unmute yourself and give your name and organization before you ask your question. Any questions?
Okay. This does conclude today's watershed academy webcast. On the behalf of the entire team I would like to thank Clark and Ellen. Thanks to every one of you that joined us. This is Megan signing off, have a great day, everyone. [ Event Concluded ]
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