A cure for Charlotte streets

Sometimes I think I’ve plopped into an alternate universe. Can it be the Charlotte Department of Transportation giving PowerPoint presentations on the importance of making city streets welcoming to pedestrians and bicyclists, as well as cars?

Ten years ago, if I’d heard that it would have meant I’d fallen, cracked my head on a rock and was hallucinating. Back then CDOT acted as if “transportation” meant only “motor vehicles.” Sidewalks, if built at all – and they weren’t required on many subdivision streets – were a stingy 4 feet wide and hugged the curb, right next to 50 mph traffic. Bicycle lanes? Why bother? Nobody rides bicycles in Charlotte! To “improve” transportation efficiency you just made all intersections wider and – if possible – added lanes wherever you could afford to (which, thankfully, was too expensive to do everywhere).

In a few spots, like where rich and/or politically influential people lived, the city proved it was “neighborhood friendly” by forbidding turns onto those sacred streets or even flat-out closing off streets. (Example: East Kingston at Euclid in Dilworth.)

So Tuesday night, at the “Sweet Streets” presentation – part of an ongoing monthly lecture/program series called Civic by Design at the Levine Museum of the New South – it was almost other-worldly to hear CDOT planner Tracy Newsome and her boss, Norm Steinman, CDOT’s planning and design manager, list changes they’re proposing to the city’s street-design standards. No, this isn’t asphalt quality or storm drain engineering. It’s about how wide or narrow streets need to be, how wide and how far from the street sidewalks should be and the importance of short block lengths and having plenty of street connections. Would you believe me if I said I think Jane Jacobs would approve?

What Newsome (no, we’re not related) and Steinman and their boss, CDOT Deputy Director Danny Pleasant are pushing is pretty much the whole philosophical approach that I and plenty of other people in town have wanted the city to adopt for years. The project’s bureaucratic name is the Urban Street Design Guidelines. They’ve been in the works at least four years – my first notes on the subject say April 2002. One early draft came out in 2003. The city’s Web site has the current draft.

Why haven’t they been adopted yet? One possibility: There’s been plenty of pushback from developers, who don’t like it whenever city rules get tighter and who specifically have complained about shorter block lengths (i.e., more pavement required, and in some cases developers may not be able to get as many lots onto a subdivision site) and about wider, 8-foot planting strips – which Newsome and Steinman say are needed if you want street trees to survive and grow. In response, CDOT has already loosened the proposed block-length requirement.

Another possibility: The city manager’s staff – as always – frets that developers will whine, City Council members will listen to the developers and the staff will acquire even more scar tissue. Well, it has been known to happen.

The CDOT folks Tuesday night said the proposals aren’t being offered for adoption yet, in order to go through yet another mind-numbingly bureaucratic review process (my words, not theirs). I figure that will take months.

That’s stupid. Adopt the street design guidelines. Now. They’re good, they’re badly needed, and they will make our city better.

If you want to pushing this much-needed improvement onto City Council’s agenda, let your council members know. Tell them you support the Urban Street Design Guidelines and want them adopted now. And if you’d like to be notified of the monthly Civic By Design forums, please notify Tom Hanchett at the Levine Museum of the New South.