An opinion piece regarding Haskell/ Peak
by Nathaniel Barrett
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The City of Dallas has two projects affecting major streets in Old East Dallas. They are both very dangerous one-way couplets with a long history of speeding and crashes that have been prioritized for safety improvements.
#1-Beacon St / Graham St Couplet: These streets have 40 crashes per year and are vastly underutilized. These streets are miserable for the people who live on them due to the constant high speed traffic and very dangerous to cross or walk around. They are common routes to several elementary schools, several popular restaurants and religious facilities and cross the Santa Fe bike/walk trail.
The city is looking at two options for changing this couplet:
Peak St / Haskell Avenue Couplet: These streets feature nearly 200 crashes a year with a high number of severe injuries and deaths. I myself have been hit on this street and it is terrifying to cross with children. It is the major dividing line between Peak's Addition and the Baylor hospital area. Speed studies show people drive extremely fast on this road.
The city is looking at two options for changing this couplet:
Option 1 (better) would change both streets into two-way streets with a fully-protected two-way cycle track on Peak Street.
Option 2 would keep one-way traffic but reduce the number of lanes from 4 to 3 (3 to 2 in some stretches) with a fully-protected two-way cycle track on Peak Street.
You can view the full project website here which features presentations made by City Engineers. My only warning is to take their assessments of the pros/cons with a grain of salt as they are biased against the two-way conversions.
Essay length version: Details on why I recommend the two-way options:
Two way streets are better for neighborhoods.
Better for local traffic-Wide One-way streets require circling the block in many cases and cause traffic confusion
Better for business-One-way streets make it hard to support a business. Not only is it hard to access the stores, but businesses also have traffic clustered at different times. Two-way streets have more evenly distributed traffic which makes for better sales.
Better for safety- One-way streets operate at higher speeds, especially with multiple lanes. Two way streets slow the cars down to reasonable speeds increasing safety and comfort. Also, in the Case of Beacon/Graham, the one-way option has only painted bike lanes which are unsafe and uncomfortable instead of protected lanes.
But what about the traffic?
The engineers are biased towards the one-way options and this bias is seen throughout their presentations. Screenshots are from their presentations 1st shots are from Beacon/Graham and 2nd shots are from Haskell/Peak
Cost: The engineers give a worse grade to the two-way options because they cost more, but that is the completely wrong perspective. It is a larger investment with larger benefits to the community.
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​Safety: Engineers act like every street functions the same regardless of design, so they rate the safety of one-way and two-way the same. They even nudge you towards one-way saying it creates "fewer conflict points" since traffic only flows one direction. This ignores the speeding effect from one-way operations, especially where there are 2-3 lanes. Engineers pretend everyone will follow the speed limits
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Traffic Operations: This is where the bias is truly at its worst and the engineers use their traffic models to get the outcome they want. The engineers prepare a model forecasting traffic at Rush Hour in 2045 with traffic growing every year. This has the effect of making the two-way options look bad (again, in 2045 at rush hour with growth assumed). Several flaws here:
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The engineers said traffic has actually dropped consistently over the last 20 years on Peak/Haskell...but assumed it would increase in the next 20 years anyway!
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Level of Service (LOS) is mis-used in a forecast because traffic is dynamic: people seek other routes! Engineers like to use forecasted LOS to show Gridlock Doom to get the answer they want.