A Waste of Money That's Our Own Asphalt
Why Have Dangerous and Expensive When We Could Have Safe and Affordable?
Same Lane
Last week we talked about how narrower lanes can significantly reduce vehicle speeds and crashes. Here’s a recent podcast from Chuck Marohn with an author of the John’s Hopkins study on how narrow lanes save lives.
Why focus on lane widths first, rather than say, speed governors for vehicles? Because lane widths are something any town can act on right now. No fancy studies or applying for grants. No consultants necessary. In places where speeding cars are most negatively impacting residents and street vitality, the town can prioritize repainting immediately. As streets are restriped by the town as part of routine maintenance, lanes can be narrowed with little additional cost. On streets due for utility work or resurfacing, the curb can be moved in, providing more room for accessible sidewalks and street trees. For a town looking to increase the safety and comfort of all of its residents (including those of us who drive regularly), narrowing lanes is a relatively cheap and easy way to make progress quickly.
The Expense of Maintaining What We Don’t Need
To the degree that changing lane widths (either using paint in the short term and/or in conjunction with narrowing actual road widths over the longer term) have associated costs, we’d more than makeup for that investment by the long-term returns in reduced maintenance costs. Asphalt is expensive to maintain. According to FHA’s most recent Status of the Nation’s Highways (page turner!), it costs about $237,500 to resurface one linear square mile of a flat, local road (I’m using the cheapest estimate provided, adjusting to 2024 dollars). We have 105 miles of road in Fairhaven. That means it would cost about $25M to resurface all of them (low estimate, given they’re not all flat, local roads and some would require additional work ). The average road needs resurfacing every 15 years. So the town would ideally might expect to spend about $1.67M per year on resurfacing alone. From what I can piece together (as of this writing I still have more numbers to collect so I could be off here) the town spends about $1.3M annually on resurfacing and more routine maintenance combined. Our DPW is already having to make a lot of hard choices about which streets get attention each year and we’re past the point where our streets can be maintained to standard with the budget that we have.
Reducing the net amount of asphalt the town has to maintain would have a significant impact on our financial position. Even a 10% reduction in the costs to maintain our roads could mean annual net savings in the six figures in perpetuity. And remember this net savings would be on top of the fact that our streets would be safer and more pleasant than they are now.
The Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Need to see it? Let’s take a look at the south end of David Drown Boulevard, a strikingly overbuilt stretch of road that sits along the bike path and is home to a condo development, an indoor pickleball/outdoor mini golf place, a bus stop and two restaurants:
This lovely piece of over-engineering is two-tenths of a mile long and features what appear to be 12-foot lanes with a four-foot shoulder. The bike path sits along a curb that precariously backs a road whose design speed is 35+MPH. Cars use this road as a cut-through to avoid an additional traffic light. There’s a (likely unwarranted?) stop sign at the bottom of the hill and an intersection at the top of it, so cars traveling from west to east tend to accelerate from 0 to 45 MPH on this short stretch, then brake at the end of it. The noise and fumes from all the exhaust make this an unpleasant road to walk or ride alongside. The speeds of the cars make it hard to cross this street safely.
A better David Drown— one that was actually a “boulevard”— would have 10-foot travel lanes, and little to no shoulder. That would free up real estate for a tree buffer (shown to calm traffic) on either side (or at least on the bike path side). Slower design speed. More pleasant to drive on. Less noise and fewer fumes. Safer and more pleasant for people on the path.
The net asphalt reduction? 12,672 linear square feet! (25%) That’s potentially thousands of dollars of annual maintenance the town no longer needs to pay for. Of course, the new buffer would need to be maintained, but that’s peanuts compared to asphalt. I’m happy to entertain arguments about why this can’t be done (something something plows or firetrucks), but it’s a tough case to make, given that streets like this are pretty ubiquitous.
We can have streets that are more pleasant and less death-y. Making this happen will save our town money that we can spend on better things than maintaining unused asphalt. It doesn’t require us to wait around for magical grants or expensive consultants to tell us what to do. It only requires that we (the people and our elected officials) are clear about our priorities and ensure that those priorities are baked into the mundane but important work of maintaining infrastructure. Removing the stuff that doesn’t serve us makes room for the stuff that does.
Ah, yes, that stop sign at the corner of Alden and David Drown. Recently I was stopped by a Fairhaven cop for going through that sign ON MY BIKE! He actually crossed into and blocked the other lane to lecture me about recklessly disregarding a stop sign at the speed of 12mph. Technically he was right to warn me about a potential $150 fine for that offense (legally it can be $40-$150), but ... REALLY? I have never seen a motorist stopped for going through that sign, though they do it all the time. FWIW bike riders have a much better view of road traffic than drivers. We are not hindered by door posts, distracted by noisy passengers, or chirping electronic devices. I have no idea why that sign is even there except to allow for people to back out of the 3-car parking area to the right of it. BTW, there is no stop sign in the other direction.
And why is there no bench or shelter at the bus stop across Alden Rd. from Job Lot? People are forced to stand out in the cold and rain, or blazing sun, or sit on overturned shopping carts to wait here for a bus. Are bus riders not worthy of a break? I'm sure this is not the only place like this. Only recently did they install a bench near the Rt 6 stop near 7-11.