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Safe Routes to Piedmont Park
| Piedmont Park recently closed its free surface parking lot, which makes safe access to the park for pedestrians and cyclists more important than ever.
 At the intersection with 14th Street, Piedmont Avenue changes from a one-way to a two-way street. To maximize the flow of cars, the signals are set so that motorists heading south on Piedmont stop at different times than those heading north. The timing is confusing, creates unreasonable delays for people on foot, and leads cyclists and pedestrians to make risky decisions. Many get trapped in the middle of the street.
Redefining "Optimal" Traffic Flow
When PEDS first brought this hazard to the attention of the City of Atlanta in 1997, engineers refused to change the signals. To them, the fact that cars were flowing constantly through the northern leg of the intersection was evidence of "optimal traffic flow."
Atlanta is changing, however, and fortunately, so is the mindset of its transportation engineers. During a site visit last week with leaders of PEDS and the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, Chief Traffic Engineers Nursef Kedir and Santana Herrera witnessed many pedestrians ignore the signs and signals and "wing it" through the intersection. Numerous high-rise condo and hotel buildings loomed overhead, reminding us all of the city's increasing density. To PEDS' delight, the engineers agreed to mark the crosswalk on the northern leg of the intersection and retime the signals to provide an exclusive phase for pedestrians to cross the street. |
Workshop for Transportation Professionals
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The interactive, highly-visual workshop covers legal issues, design requirements for sidewalks, crossings, curb
ramps, signals
and more. Michael Ronkin, President of Designing Streets for
Pedestrians and Pedestrians, and U.S. Access Board Transportation Accessibility
Specialist Dennis Cannon, are the instructors. PEDS encourages landscape architects, transportation engineers and planners, urban designers, contractors, and developers to attend. Space is limited, so sign up soon.Many recently installed sidewalks and curb ramps in metro
Atlanta violate design requirements mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act. They're also difficult, if not
impossible, for people with disabilities to use. This
workshop, which PEDS is providing in
partnership with the U.S. Access Board and the Georgia
Governor's Office of Highway Safety, is aimed at helping transportation professionals design and build sidewalks and intersections that provide access to all. |
VIDEO: Driver Feedback Sign Reduces Speeding
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 PEDS asked Georgia-based sign manufacturer Radarsign to
demonstrate the effectiveness of a driver feedback sign on North
Peachtree Road, a street plagued by speedy drivers.
Operating in "stealth" mode for a week, the sign detected that more than half of all
drivers were speeding. When the sign was activated to display driver's speed, the total number of
speeders dropped by over 40 percent. The sign also slowed the fastest
drivers on the road by nearly ten miles per hour and cut the number of
drivers exceeding 40mph by 50 percent.
Watch the 3-minute video here. Our driver feedback sign demonstration also appeared in the DeKalb Neighbor article and a WSB TV report.
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Over 850 Petitioners Ask Atlanta to Fix Broken Sidewalks
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 PEDS'
booth at the Inman Park Festival last month struck a nerve with both city residents
and visitors. Parents pushing strollers, wheelchair users, runners,
older adults, and others expressed outrage about the hazardous
condition of Atlanta's sidewalks. One woman even showed us stitches resulting from a recent sidewalk-tripping injury!
More than 600 festival attendees signed our petition, asking the
City Council to make sidewalk maintenance the responsibility of the City, not abutting property owners. The petition also asks the City to
approve a bond referendum allocating at least $40 million to sidewalk
repairs.
We also gathered over 250 signatures online. If you're a City of Atlanta resident, please sign the online petition and leave comments for City representatives. Once we collect 1,000 signatures, we'll submit them to the mayor and city council. Let's build the political will needed to fix Atlanta's sidewalks.
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Surveys suggest 35% of Atlanta's Sidewalks Need Repairs
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 Based on limited sampling conducted in the past few years, the Atlanta Public Works Department estimates that 25 percent of the City's sidewalks need to be repaired or replaced. Surveys conducted by PEDS volunteers suggest the problem is worse.
During April, volunteers surveyed sidewalks on over 100 Atlanta streets, located in a good mix of residential and commercial areas. On Kirkwood Avenue, Memorial Drive, and other streets, 75% of the sidewalks were broken! Not surprisingly, areas with newer sidewalks were in better shape. On average, 35 percent of sidewalks surveyed by volunteers need repairs.
PEDS thanks all the volunteers who helped with this project.
Volunteers' names were entered into two prize drawings. Mairead Reid
won the $75 Phiddipides gift certificate; Nancy von Neumann won a
20-Trip MARTA breeze Card. Congratulations to both!
PEDS also submitted an open records request to Public Works, which enabled us to examine the City's sidewalk inventories. To our surprise, data collected by Public Works focused primarily on commercial streets. Sidewalks are in much worse condition on tree-lined neighborhood streets, particularly where sidewalks are made of bricks or hexagon pavers. Omitting these streets from the sampling efforts probably caused Public Works to underestimate the severity of the problem.
To follow up on the survey, PEDS' President Sally Flocks and Vice-Chairperson Mary Carole Cooney met with Atlanta Public Works Commissioner Joe Basista to discuss the prospects for funding sidewalk maintenance via a bond referendum. Basista said a referendum is unlikely until 2010.
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