I've heard a lot about the striping on Mill st from both drivers and cyclists. In July, I had the opportunity to ask Worcester Department of Transportation and Mobility (DTM) Asst. Director Todd Kirrane a few questions about the design. Hopefully you'll find this as enlightening as I did. - Dale Wickenheiser
DW: I understand the striping design came from the Federal govt. Is that correct?
TK: No, the decision to implement changes on Mill Street as part of the pavement preservation project came from the staff of the Department of Transportation & Mobility in conjunction with the Department of Public Works & Parks and the City Manager. Our collective goal was to address the documented safety and access concerns on the street and begin to implement the City’s Complete Streets Policy. The policy, which was unanimously adopted back in 2019, calls for approaching every transportation project and program as an opportunity to improve the city’s streets and our transportation network for all users. The design, which includes a road diet, lane width reduction, parking protected bike lanes, ADA ramps, RRFBs (Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons), and a new crosswalk at June Street follows federal & state standards and industry best practices.
DW: How did the process happen? You all in the DTM office weren't just sitting around with nothing to do and one day decided 'Hey, let's do this crazy striping pattern on Mill st. just to drive everyone crazy'.
TK: NO. DPW&P [Worcester Department of Public Works and Parks] informed our office of the arterial roadways that they were planning on reconstructing portions of in 2023 as part of their pavement management program and asked DTM to identify any safety improvements we recommended for inclusion. We prepared concept designs for the 5 arterial roadways, discussed them with relevant City staff, the Transportation Advisory Group, drafted a memo to City Council, and held a neighborhood meeting in July. Based on the contractor scheduling, the first one implemented was Mill Street.
DW: Who paid for the striping work to be done? Were there design restrictions that came with the money? ie; did you apply for a grant and the feds said, 'we'll give you money but you have to do it like this?' Or were there options you could pick from?
TK: The pavement preservation project, including the pavement markings, was paid for through the City’s capital budget allocated toward the pavement management program. The RRFB purchase and installation was paid for through the City’s Traffic Signal capital budget. There were no outside, i.e. federal funds, that paid for any portion of the current work and therefore no “strings” were attached. There is a separate federal congressional earmark that the City applied for and received, with support of Representative McGovern and Senators Markey & Warren and local elected officials that will help cover the cost to design a permanent Complete Streets project on Mill Street. That project will kick off later this month with a City staff led visioning meeting on July 24th at the Mill Swan School. Because that project is likely to use federal and/or state funding sources for construction, we will need to follow federal and state requirements for design development.
DW: Why is the buffer lane between the parked cars and the bike lane?
TK: Drivers, when parked next to a traffic lane, are used to looking for approaching vehicles before opening their door and jumping out because that is the norm for on-street parking throughout the city, region, and country. That is not the case for cyclists. Some studies show that dooring of cyclists account for almost 20% of all reported bike crashes in the USA. Dooring is caused when a car door is opened unexpectantly, in the path of the cyclist, forcing them to either collide with the car door or swerve into traffic and risk potential crashes with moving vehicles. While some like to criticize the use of national statistics on local projects, sadly the reality is that it is not just a national statistic but a local fact that has led to fatal crashes for cyclists in nearby communities in recent years. One of the main goals of modern transportation planning and traffic engineering is to realize people are human, humans make mistakes, and to try to account for those mistakes in the design of roadways so they do not become fatal mistakes. The purpose of the buffer is to provide space for the opening of car doors in a manner that is not in the bike lane itself when the bike lane is positioned at street level adjacent to a parking lane. They are meant to be positioned beside the car door closest to the bike lane. In the case of Mill Street and parking protected bike lanes, that is on the passenger side door for the vast majority of the corridor.
DW: Putting the car parking between the car and bike travel lanes seems counter - intuitive. Why not have the bike travel lane next to the car travel lane?
TK: The best street design for the safety and access of all users provides separation between the modes and provides each mode their own space. Pedestrians on sidewalks, cyclists and micro-mobility users on grade separated mobility lanes, parked cars in parking lanes, and motor vehicles in driving lanes. Of course, every design is context sensitive, but this generally happens when a new road is constructed, or an existing road is reconstructed. Unfortunately, no municipality has enough funding to reconstruct all roadways and build a modern, multi-modal transportation network in one fell swoop. So, we use retrofit and quick-build projects to create safer accommodations on projects. This includes use of pavement markings, signage, bollards, lane reassignments, minor curb realignments, and other materials to create safer operating conditions and one of the best ways to increase safety on a multi-lane roadway like Mill Street is through a road diet and use of parking protected bike lanes. This changes nothing for motorists as every street that has on-street parking has it adjacent to travel lanes. But for vulnerable roadway users, this creates dedicated spaces and provides a level of protection and separation between moving vehicles and pedestrians and cyclists using the sidewalk and mobility lanes. This has been done successfully throughout North America including locally in Boston, Cambridge, Somervile, Brookline, and other communities and overtime we expect it to be successful in Worcester.
DW: Since Mill st. is such a long, uninterrupted stretch of road, has there been any talk of installing stop signs (like at June st., Airport dr., near Coes beach), to break up the 'speedway' aspect of the road?
TK: Motor vehicle speed on Mill Street is definitely one of our largest concerns on the corridor. With two wide lanes in each direction the average speed was 38 mph and the 85th percentile speed exceed 45mph in a 30mph zone. For good or for bad, Federal Highway’s MUTCD (Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices) does not allow for the use of STOP signs for speed management or traffic calming purposes and in Massachusetts municipalities are required under state law to follow the MUTCD. Instead, they recommend using roundabouts, RRFBs, Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons, and traffic signals at intersection locations and traffic calming measures to control speed along the corridor and improve safety. But those can be expensive options that require hard construction. As part of the full redesign of Mill Street, we expect to consider opportunities to increase safety at key intersection as well as create additional crossing opportunities for pedestrians to safely access recreational and commercial attractions on the opposite side of the street. In the short term, as part of this retrofit project, we used a lower cost road diet and reduced from 2 to 1 travel lane in each direction as well as reduced the width of the travel lane to better manage travel speeds. Additional measures we plan to install this summer to manage speeds include driver feedback radar speed display boards. These three measures have been proven to result in speed reduction and increased safety.
DW: As I understand it, the striping is a temporary situation until the road can be physically redesigned. Can you share with us any of the speed reducing features that might be included if the roadway was to be physically redesigned?
TK: I fully anticipate the road diet to remain permanent with the full redesign and to achieve fully separated areas for each roadway user, but the how that looks will be decided by a community involved public design process.
DW: Is there a website or more information that people can access that covers how these designs come about? What agencies, groups, etc. are involved in creating these designs and who determines what's 'best practice'?
TK: Our website has some good information to start, but if anyone wants to dig into the topic of Complete Streets, Vision Zero, and the design elements that communities are using I would recommend
Federal Highway’s Safe System Approach (https://www.transportation.gov/NRSS/SafeSystem),
NACTO Design Guides (National Association of City Transportation Officials | National Association of City Transportation Officials (nacto.org),
MassDOT’s Safe Speeds website – especially their treatment toolkit (https://www.mass.gov/safe-speeds),
MassDOT’s Safe Routes to School website (https://www.mass.gov/safe-routes-to-school),
and Smart Growth America’s Dangerous by Design (https://smartgrowthamerica.org/dangerous-by-design/)