The Northside of the City of Spartanburg – the community that runs down Howard Street and around Cleveland Park – is one of four communities where Partners for Active Living is supporting community action to prevent childhood obesity. Over the next four years, PAL and its partners will be working with Northside residents to improve existing parks and recreation areas in the community and to increase the number of people walking, biking, and playing.
UPDATE: Chapel Street Park intersection improvements slow vehicles, improve safety
This intersection sits at the entrance to Chapel Street Park on the northwest corner, a small, city-owned park with a playground, basketball court and picnic pavilion. Fremont Avenue enters from the west, and turns south. Chapel Street enters from the west, and ends. Vernon Street enters from the north. Vernon used to continue roughly south west, but the city cut off that section in the late 90s; the Spartanburg Housing Authority built some home-ownership units there.
The initial redesign left Fremont Avenue with a very wide turning radius. The stop signs on Vernon Street and Fremont Avenue northbound were poorly placed, and a two-way stop barely slowed cars. The very wide intersection blurred the evident crossing places, so that the most obvious crossing actually bisected the intersection.
In the spring of 2010, a group of residents identified the park as the main play area in the neighborhood. A walking tour in September 2010 showed the difficulties of crossing the intersection, and the residents agreed that finding funding to help the city ameliorate the intersection would go a long way to making the park safer for all. An application for shared funding from the City to the Mary Black Foundation was approved; work began and was completed in July 2011. The wide turning radius on Fremont Avenue was squared, recapturing significant space for pedestrians. Crosswalks were added to all four crossings, and stop signs re-configured.
In every sector, traffic speed through the intersection decreased after the changes were complete. On Fremont Street eastbound, collections before found that 95% of the total volume exceeded 30 miles per hour, that 71% of vehicles traveled over 40 mph, and 23% traveled over 50 mph. One car was tracked over 90 mph. After the changes were complete, 63% of vehicles traveled over 25 mph (the designated speed limit), with only 2% over 55 mph.
On Chapel Street westbound, 90% of vehicles traveled over 30 mph before the changes, with only 32% over 25 mph after the changes. Just .34% of vehicles traveled over 50 mph after the changes, while 14% traveled over 50 before. These decreases in average speeds show that automobile travel should be safer as well.
From this data, we can conclude that the built environment changes around Chapel Street Park did indeed result in lower speeds, making travel safer for pedestrians. However, those speeds are still over the speed limit. At 40 mph, a pedestrian would bear a 40% chance of being killed if hit by a driver (“Main Street: When a Highway Runs Through It.” Oregon Department of Transportation, 1999). Slower car are just plain more safe: a pedestrian hit by a car traveling 20 miles per hour stands only a 5% chance of being killed.
Not only is a fatal accident more likely as speed increases, we see less when we drive fast, and may miss the mother with her children looking to cross or crossing the street. We must expect that there will be children crossing the street, with or without parents, near a park, and that all pedestrians deserve fair and safe passage.
We have made that passage safer with the measures we implemented, but clearly there is more to be done. Part of the onus is on drivers to be sure: we should drive the marked speed limit. But as this data shows us, driver behavior can be changed with built environment improvements: what other measures might we be able to implement to make Chapel Street Park accessible to all?
