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Street Trees and Intersection Safety

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Street Trees and Intersection Safety Institute of Urban & Regional Development IURD Working Paper Series (University of California, Berkeley) Year Paper WP-- Street Trees and Intersection Safety Elizabeth Macdonald ∗ Alethea Harper † Jeff Williams ‡ Jason A. Hayter ∗∗ ∗Department of City & Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley †Department of City & Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley ‡Department of City & Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley ∗∗Department of City & Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley This paper is posted at the eScholarship Repository, University of California. http://repositories.cdlib.org/iurd/wps/WP-2006-11 Copyright c 2006 by the authors. Street Trees and Intersection Safety Abstract This study and report is about street trees and intersection safety in urban contexts. The study derives from a rather simple, straightforward observation: that on the best tree-lined streets the trees come close to the corners. They do not stop at some distance back from the intersecting street right-of-way. Indeed, in Paris, a city noted for its street trees, if the regular spacing of trees along the street runs short at an intersection, there is likely to be an extra tree placed at the corner. For at least 250 years, the finest of streets the world over have been associated with trees. Elm or oak shaded residential and commercial main streets remain as memories, but seldom as realities, of the best American urbanism. In the automobile age, a real concern with safety has resulted in street tree standards in the United States that dictate long setbacks from intersections, ostensibly geared to achieving unobstructed sight lines for drivers. But are street trees the safety problem they are purported to be? And are other physical, controllable qualities more important for preserving sight lines at intersections? Working Paper 2006-11 Street Trees and Intersection Safety Elizabeth Macdonald with Alethea Harper, Jeff Williams, and Jason A. Hayter Institute of Urban and Regional Development University of California at Berkeley This paper was produced with support provided by the US Department of Transportation and the California State Department of Transportation (Caltrans) through the University of California Transportation Center. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments........................................................................................5 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION, OBJECTIVES AND METHODS ........7 Study Methods and Objectives ......................................................11 What Follows.................................................................................14 CHAPTER 2: AASHTO STANDARDS FOR SIGHT TRIANGLES AT INTERSECTIONS.........................................................................17 Intersection Sight Distance and Clear Sight Triangles ..................17 Hypothetical “Typical” Urban Intersection Examples ..................26 Conclusions....................................................................................32 CHAPTER 3: CITY POLICIES REGARDING TREE, PARKING, AND NEWSPAPER RACKS NEAR INTERSECTIONS......................35 Standards for Street Trees..............................................................38 Standards for On-street Parking.....................................................46 Standards for Newspaper Racks ....................................................50 Conclusions....................................................................................56 CHAPTER 4: THE DIGITAL MODELS, DRIVE-THROUGH SIMULATIONS, AND AREAS OF VISIBILITY........................57 The Digital Models ........................................................................57 The Drive-through Simulations .....................................................62 CHAPTER 5: THE EFFECTS OF STREET TREES AND OTHER OBJECTS ON VISIBILITY AT INTERSECTIONS....................67 The Drive-through Simulation Video Experiment Procedures......67 The Drive-through Simulation Video Experiment Results............68 Reaction Time Corrections ............................................................73 The Surveys ...................................................................................76 Conclusions....................................................................................77 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSIONS, POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS, AND FURTHER RESEARCH......................................................81 Policy Recommendations...............................................................83 Further Research ............................................................................83 References..................................................................................................85 Appendix....................................................................................................91 3 4 Acknowledgments Many people have helped with this research project and the writing of this report. First and foremost are the three exceptional Berkeley students who worked on various parts of the project over the last two years. Alethea Harper did truly amazing work. She created the digital models, simulations, and video renderings with great diligence and care, creatively solving and overcoming the many problems and challenges that came along the way, and cheerfully adjusting directions when necessary as the research evolved. The research could not have been done without her. Jeff Williams also did remarkable work. With dogged determination in spite of encountering many obstacles, he gathered the city standards related to street trees, parked cars, and newspaper racks, and analyzed them with care. He also took a first pass at analyzing how AASHTO recommendations might apply to urban contexts. Jason Hayter joined the research team toward the end of the project, stepping in to assist with conducting the experiments performed with the drive-through simulations. I am grateful for his able assistance. For this final report, each student prepared draft outlines describing their areas of responsibility. In addition, Dov Jelen provided technical assistance with the digital models, simulations, and renderings—including allowing us to use his “high-end” computer to perform the video renderings when our machines proved overwhelmed by the task. The staff of UC Berkeley’s XLab, the Social Science Research Laboratory, were enormously helpful, providing support and facilities for conducting the experiments with the drive-through simulations. Thanks go to Brenda Naputi for her able administrative assistance and to Bob Barde for his enthusiastic support of the project. Special thanks go to Lawrence Sweet. The experiments could not have been accomplished with anywhere near the elegance and efficiency that was achieved without his creative thinking and technical expertise. This research project was funded through a competitively awarded UCTC faculty grant. Thanks go to the several anonymous reviewers who gave the grant proposal high marks and urged its funding, and to Elizabeth Deakin, Director of UCTC, for her encouragement of this project. The recruiting of human subjects was made possible by a generous grant from UC Berkeley’s XLab. Thanks are due to the staff at IURD, particularly Carey Pelton and Mary Altez for their administrative support. Without their kind and generous help, administering a project like this and producing this report, would not have been possible. 5 On a more personal note, special thanks go to my partner, Allan Jacobs, with whom I have worked on many challenging street design projects and who has shown by example how to do research that is useful to professionals. Thanks go as well to my urban design colleagues at the College of Environmental Design, with whom I enjoy a shared enquiry into the possibilities of urban form and the quality of everyday life—most particularly Richard Bender, Peter Bosselmann, Donlyn Lyndon, Louise Mozingo, Michael Southworth, Judith Stilgenbauer, and Clark Wilson. Further thanks go to the many professional colleagues with whom I’ve discussed the intersection sight triangle issue, particularly Rick Hall and Billy Hattaway. Finally, thanks go to the many smart students I’ve worked with over the years who constantly inspire me. 6 Street Trees and Intersection Safety Elizabeth Macdonald with Alethea Harper, Jeff Williams, and Jason A. Hayter CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION, METHODS, AND OBJECTIVES This study and report is about street trees and intersection safety in urban contexts. The study derives from a rather simple, straightforward observation: that on the best tree-lined streets the trees come close to the corners. They do not stop at some distance back from the intersecting street right-of-way. Indeed, in Paris, a city noted for its street trees, if the regular spacing of trees along the street runs short at an intersection, there is likely to be an extra tree placed at the corner. For at least 250 years, the finest of streets the world over have been associated with trees. Elm or oak shaded residential and commercial main streets remain as memories, but seldom as realities, of the best American urbanism. In the automobile age, a real concern with safety has resulted in street tree standards in the United States that dictate long setbacks from intersections, ostensibly geared to achieving unobstructed sight lines for drivers. But are street trees the safety problem they are purported to be? And are other physical, controllable qualities more important for preserving sight lines at intersections? Engineering
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