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Taking back the city's streets

After decades of dominance by the automobile, downtown plans to slow the often dangerous traffic to encourage walking.

By MICHAEL VAN SICKLER
Published May 22, 2005

TAMPA - They weren't even in the street when they got hit.

A skidding Honda Civic slammed into Jeri Burnett, Elizabeth Branch and Dujardin Roseao while they were standing on the sidewalk along Florida Avenue and Twiggs Street in January. All three were taken to a hospital.

In November, a Ford Mustang sped west off the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway, ran a red light at Morgan and Brorein streets, and smashed into a car driven by U.S. Secret Service agent Philip Lebid. The force of the crash pushed Lebid's car into an oncoming tour bus, killing him.

"This poor soul was just at the wrong place at the wrong time," said Tampa police spokesman Joe Durkin. "And it could have just as easily been you or me."

When it comes to downtown Tampa, randomness is a way of life - and death. For the last 60 years, traffic engineers have designed streets across the country to carry the maximum load of vehicles at the highest speeds possible. In Tampa, they've succeeded all too well.

While motorists may relish drives down the one-way Florida Avenue and Tampa Street at speeds of more than 50 mph through a succession of beckoning green lights, the city's devotion to the automobile effectively shuns walking, cycling and rail as practical options.

"The problem with Tampa is that the streets engender higher speeds than you typically want in a downtown area," said Ed Crawford, a spokesman for the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority. "You don't want speeds of more than 25 mph. When you get speeds greater than that, it chases away any human activity because it doesn't feel safe."

Tampa garners national attention for streets regularly ranked among the deadliest for pedestrians and cyclists.

Turf ceded to the automobile doesn't end at the street curb. Parking lots the size of those found at theme parks cover much of downtown real estate. Bland parking garages sprout closer to the core. After 5 p.m., downtown becomes a barren sea of asphalt and concrete.

"It is difficult to count the number of cities that have been extensively damaged by kowtowing to the demands of the automobile," wrote Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck in their 2000 book, Suburban Nation. "The typical result is a downtown where nobody walks, a no-man's land brutalized by traffic."

But with more than two dozen residential projects planned for Tampa's downtown, city officials anticipate an influx of pedestrians that will challenge the car's pre-eminence for the first time in two generations.

"We're going to change the face of downtown, bring it into the next century and in line with the residential construction," said Roy LaMotte, Jr., the city's transportation manager. "We're putting the pedestrian first."

After years of delay, Tampa joins other cities, including St. Petersburg, that have reversed years of civil engineering and reconfigured streets to slow traffic and encourage walking.

An ambitious list of recommendations, now being drafted by a committee of regional transportation officials, would dramatically alter Tampa's downtown if approved.

Not only would many of the changes slow traffic in the core business district, some would provide a greater array of transit options, such as expanding trolley and streetcar services and building a station on the north end.

For now, city officials and Hillsborough County's Metropolitan Planning Organization propose converting Zack, Twiggs, Madison and Polk streets from one-way to two-way. The conversion has been talked about for almost five years, but this time, officials say, it will happen because the city has a mayor - Pam Iorio - who supports it.

"She's looking at downtown as a neighborhood," said Wilson Stair, the city's urban design manager who has long pushed for changes to the downtown. "There's a long way to go, but this is an important first step that she seems willing to take. It's very encouraging."

Another proposed change that may draw the ire of motorists is adjusting the traffic signals on Florida and Tampa avenues so that motorists stop more often. That won't happen until the Florida Department of Transportation reviews it to make sure it doesn't disrupt traffic flow on surrounding federal and state highways.

Other changes include adding more on-street parking to provide buffers between pedestrians and traffic, requiring new parking garages to include retail on the ground floor, and setting aside lanes for cyclists.

Although they may sound minor, these changes, especially the conversion of one-way streets, are a good bet to revive downtown, Crawford said.

"Not to be too tough on Tampa, but the core area needs help," he said. "These are modest proposals that will have a huge benefit in creating a safe environment. Look around downtown. It's dead at night and on weekends. We don't have much to lose."

It's an approach that breaks with a tradition established soon after automobile sales exploded after the 1920s and politicians and government officials first felt pressure to improve and build roads suitable for car travel.

During World War II, Americans were impressed by Nazi Germany's highways, which were designed to move an abundance of vehicles at high rates of speed. When civil engineers returned from the war, they adopted this style to the congested streets in downtowns. This meant building an interstate highway system and converting streets into one-way routes.

A 1946 traffic study of Tampa's downtown paid by the State Road Department of Florida, outlined a new philosophy that sought to rid streets of obstructions such as "street parking, hordes of pedestrians and delaying traffic lights" because they "reduce vehicular movement." These are now the same impediments that city officials are touting as a way to return balance to downtown's streets.

While the post-World War II civil engineers were correct to conclude that one-way streets would reduce congestion, they didn't fully consider what they would do to downtowns, according to Walter Kulash, a traffic engineer at the Orlando firm Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin Lopez Rinehart.

"We now understand that downtowns that operate predominantly as a place of work and clear out in the evening are the ones most often struggling to foster new development and business ventures," Kulash wrote in a report with G. Wade Walker and Brian McHugh. "The longstanding mantra to seek the greatest speed by which commuter motorists can flee the city has accelerated the downtown deterioration process."

St. Petersburg is already starting to convert its one-way streets to two-way after they were changed in the 1960s and 1970s. Parts of Eighth and Martin Luther King streets were switched back to two-ways about 15 months ago, said Mike Connors, the city's director of engineering, stormwater and traffic operations. Other segments to be switched are on Third and Second avenues and Fourth Street.

"This is a 180 degree shift from where we're coming from," said Connors. "It's more efficient flow on one-way streets. But straightforward logic tells you motorists have to go a block out of their way sometimes on one-way, and that produces more traffic."

But St. Petersburg's downtown has a diverse mix of retail, residential and office, so there's already more life to its streets. Tampa's downtown is still one-dimensional, dominated by one use: offices.

With residential projects on the horizon, now is the time to tweak the street system, said Karen Kress, director of transportation and planning at the Tampa Downtown Partnership.

"Transportation has to be more than moving cars," Kress said. "It has to be a blend. As I'm walking down the street, I have to feel safe or it won't be a pleasant experience. Changing these streets sounds boring, but it can really influence what downtown can become."

Michael Van Sickler can be reached at 813 226-3402 or mvansickler@sptimes.com

[Last modified May 22, 2005, 01:06:16]