credit: moriza
This is part five of the series “How Government Regulation Forces Americans Into Their Cars”, where I publish a recent paper by a local professor Michael Lewyn. Read the other parts: part one | part two | part three | part four.
In addition to regulating parking and zoning, Jacksonville has a separate set of regulations governing street design. [FN42] Jacksonville’s street regulations consistently mandate wide streets and long blocks. The costs of these choices will be addressed below.
Fat Streets
Jacksonville mandates that the largest major streets be at least 150 feet wide, [FN43] which means that such streets may have as many as 140 feet of pavement [FN44] and ten lanes. [FN45] A second category of streets, “minor arterials,” must be 120 feet wide, and even “collector” streets, designed to interconnect residential and commercial areas, must be 70 to 80 feet wide. [FN46]
Even by the standards of the United States, such streets are unusually wide: the typical American “principal arterial” street in an urban area has only 39 feet of pavement, and the typical American collector street in a rural area has only 24 feet of pavement. [FN47]
Jacksonville’s wide streets discourage walking (and to a lesser extent, biking) in a variety of ways.
First, a wide street lengthens pedestrian commutes because “a wide[] roadway takes longer to cross” than a narrower street. [FN48]
Second, wide streets may also be more dangerous for pedestrians because a longer commute “increase[es] the [amount of] time [a] pedestrian is exposed to traffic.” [FN49]
Third, wide streets may also endanger pedestrians and bicyclists by encouraging motorists to drive faster. [FN50] Fast traffic may increase the number of accidents because a motorist driving 30 miles per hour has a field of vision spanning about 150 degrees, while a motorist driving 60 miles per hour has a 50-degree field of vision. [FN51]
Fast traffic also increases the severity of accidents: the probability of a pedestrian being killed by an automobile is only 3.5% where the automobile is traveling 15 miles per hour, increases to 37% if the automobile is traveling 31 miles per hour, and increases to 83% if the automobile is traveling 44 miles per hour. [FN52]
Finally, wide streets require government to take more land from landowners than narrow streets, thus reducing population density by taking land that landowners could use to build housing. [FN53] As noted above, low-density areas tend to have low levels of walking and transit use because the fewer the number of housing units that can be placed near a bus stop or other destination, the smaller the number of people who can comfortably walk to that destination. [FN54]
Long Blocks
Jacksonville limits the number of streets intersecting major streets, allowing only four intersections per mile (or one every 1320 feet) [FN55] on “major arterials” and eight per mile (or one every 660 feet) on “minor arterials.” [FN56] Thus, the amount of pavement between one intersection and another must be at least 660 feet long, even on “minor” arterials.
If a city has only a few intersections per mile, pedestrians have very few opportunities to cross streets and thus must spend more time trying to reach destinations between two intersections. [FN57]
By contrast, short blocks (such as the 200-foot blocks common in Portland, Oregon) [FN58] make it easier for pedestrians to cross streets [FN59] and thus to reach destinations without going out of their way to do so. Thus, pedestrians benefit from short blocks and suffer from long blocks.
Footnotes
[FN42]. Or more accurately, Jacksonville has two sets of regulations. Privately-built subdivisions are regulated primarily through section 654 of the Code, and municipal traffic engineering is governed by the city’s Comprehensive Plan. See CITY OF JACKSONVILLE, PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT DEP’T, 2010 COMPREHENSIVE PLAN: TRANSPORTATION ELEMENT (2005) [hereinafter COMPREHENSIVE PLAN], available at here (follow “Transportation Element” hyperlink). The subdivision regulations incorporate the Comprehensive Plan. See JACKSONVILLE, FLA., ORDINANCE CODE § 654.103(b) (1990), available at http:// www.municode.com/resources/gateway.asp?pid=12174&sid=9.
[FN43]. JACKSONVILLE, FLA., ORDINANCE CODE § 654.113; COMPREHENSIVE PLAN, supra note 42, § 3.2.2. This classification is for “major arterials”–the most heavily trafficked streets other than limited-access highways. See JACKSONVILLE, FLA., ORDINANCE CODE §§ 654.106(II)(6) (defining “major arterial”); 654.113 (establishing that only streets wider than major arterials are limited-access highways).
[FN44]. Sidewalks on Jacksonville’s nonresidential streets are typically five feet wide. JACKSONVILLE, FLA., ORDINANCE CODE § 654.133(d). So if a 150- foot street has sidewalks on both sides of the street, the pavement can be no more than 140 feet. In addition, a street may have a few feet of landscaping between the sidewalks and the street, or between the sidewalk and the right-of-way line. Cf. Michael Southworth & Eran Ben-Joseph, Street Standards and the Shaping of Suburbia, 61 J. AM. PLAN. ASS’N. 65, 74-76 (1995), available at 1995 WLNR 3951363 (noting that in the 1930s, the Federal Housing Administration (”FHA”) recommended that streets have twenty-four feet of pavement, four feet of sidewalks, and eight feet of land reserved for plants and utilities; FHA standards adopted by many municipalities).
[FN45]. The city’s Comprehensive Plan provides that traffic lanes will be 16 feet wide on outside lanes and 12 feet wide for other lanes. COMPREHENSIVE PLAN, supra note 42, § 3.1.3. Thus, a ten-lane street might take up 128 feet of pavement (32 feet for the two outside lanes and 96 feet for eight twelve-foot interior lanes), allowing 22 feet of right-of-way for sidewalks and landscaping.
[FN46]. JACKSONVILLE, FLA., ORDINANCE CODE § 654.113; COMPREHENSIVE PLAN, supra note 42, § 3.2.2 (streets must be 70 feet wide if they contain curbs and gutters and otherwise 80 feet wide). See also JACKSONVILLE, FLA., ORDINANCE CODE § 654.106(II)(1) (defining “collector” streets).
[FN47]. TODD LITMAN, VICTORIA TRANSP. POLICY INST., TRANSPORTATION LAND VALUATION: EVALUATING POLICIES AND PRACTICES THAT AFFECT THE AMOUNT OF LAND DEVOTED TO TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES 4 (2005), available at http:// www.vtpi.org/land.pdf.
[FN48]. Donavan v. Jones, 26,883, p. 15 (La. App. 2 Cir. 6/21/95); 658 So. 2d 755, 765 (stating in its description of expert testimony “a wider roadway takes longer to cross”).
[FN49]. Id.
[FN50]. See Stephen H. Burrington, Restoring the Rule of Law and Respect for Communities in Transportation, 5 N.Y.U. ENVTL. L.J. 691, 701 (1996) (stating that the government widens roads because of “solicitude toward fast traffic”).
[FN51]. Id. at 704 n.50.
[FN52]. Id. at 704.
[FN53]. See Michele Derus, Zoning Can Curb Lower-Cost Housing, THE MILWAUKEE J. SENTINEL, Sept. 21, 1997, available at http://calbears.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4196/is_19970921/ai_n10359570 (”Each [ten] feet of required street width reduces [housing] supply by [three] to [four] percentage points.”).
[FN54]. See supra notes 20-22 and accompanying text.
[FN55]. There are 5280 feet in a mile. Robinson v. Arrugueta, 415 F.3d 1252, 1254 n.2 (11th Cir. 2005). So a street with four intersections per mile has one intersection every 1320 feet (5280 divided by four).
[FN56]. JACKSONVILLE, FLA., ORDINANCE CODE § 654.115 (1990), available at
http://www.municode.com/resources/gateway.asp?pid=12174&sid=9; COMPREHENSIVE PLAN, supra note 42, § 2.3.1.
[FN57]. Jeff Gray, Police Blaming Accident Victims, Pedestrian Says, GLOBE & MAIL (Canada), Mar. 15, 2004, at A8, available at 2004 WNLR 18380258 (stating that in suburban Toronto there is “trouble for pedestrians” because of large streets that “barely allow pedestrians enough time to cross and the long blocks that provide so few safe opportunities to do so.” (emphasis added)).
[FN58]. See Robert Campbell, Lively City Neighborhoods Require New Blocks on the Block, BOSTON GLOBE, Jan. 13, 1991, at A4, available at 1991 WNLR 1732980. See also EWING, supra note 31, at 4 (300-foot blocks desirable for walkability); TRANSPORTATION AND GROWTH MANAGEMENT PROGRAM, MAIN STREET HANDBOOK: WHEN A
HIGHWAY RUNS THRU IT 35 (1999), available at http://www.lcd.state.or.us/LCD/TGM/docs/mainstreet.pdf (200 to 400 feet ideal).
[FN59]. See Gray, supra note 57 (stating that long blocks reduce opportunities to cross streets).
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