CAMDEN, Maine — There is a simple truth that Maine small towns would do well to learn and embrace, Dan Burden says. The lower the speed of vehicles passing through, the higher the retail sales at downtown shops and restaurants.
Burden, a national expert in making downtowns pedestrian-friendly, was the guest speaker at workshops hosted by The Friends of Midcoast Maine in Thomaston on Monday and in Camden on Tuesday.
Slowing down traffic is much more complicated than posting lower speed limits, though, as workshop participants learned.
A group of 30 participants ventured out of the town office building Tuesday morning onto Washington Street to see downtown Camden through Burden’s eyes. The tour had barely begun when Burden stopped everyone. Out came a carpenter’s tape measure and Burden noted the width of the travel lane of the one-way side street was 10 feet.
Most travel lanes should be 10 feet wide in downtowns, he said, though transportation planners typically have built them at 13 feet. Burden measured the parking spaces on the street at 8 feet; too wide, he said.
“We still have that duty to move traffic,” he said. “But the first rule is for the traffic to obey the rules of the community.”
When some participants suggested that Maine’s Department of Transportation might not agree, Burden assured them they’d “be surprised how much change you’re in charge of.”
Narrowing street width is just one way to get drivers to slow down. Psychological “traffic-calming” cues such as adding street plantings, different colored paving and edging and islands have come into common use in many parts of Maine. But in the walking tour, Burden revealed finer points of boosting downtown economic and cultural viability.
While working for Florida’s state transportation department, he observed that traffic engineers drove through the intersections they planned to modify. After insisting they walk through and around intersections, the designs got better, he said.
“You’re going to be the pioneers,” he said, not the DOT.
Downtown Camden scored many points with Burden, but rather than praise town leaders, he noted where improvements could be made. Stopping on Elm Street in front of the Rite Aid, which the town planning board mandated have a pitched roof with dormer windows, he doled out praise.
“This is one of the better Rite Aids I’ve seen in America,” Burden said. Then he quizzed participants: “What’s the ugliest thing on this street?” After a moment with no responses, he pointed to the trash receptacles. Residents defended them, noting that the flower boxes that sit atop them have not yet been filled.
Later, in a slideshow, Burden showed trash receptacles from other towns, including some topped with copper and decorated with thought-inspiring quotes.
One phrase participants heard over and over during Burden’s presentation was back-in, diagonal parking. Most Maine downtowns have a mix of parallel and diagonal parking spots but few if any have parking that requires drivers to back in diagonally.
Such parking schemes create more spaces, and, according to Burden, are the easiest and safest for drivers to use.
“Every off-street parking space created takes three times as much space as on-street parking,” he said.
Roundabouts, also known as rotaries, also were a theme Burden touched on repeatedly.
He recommended Camden consider creating a small roundabout at the Union Street/U.S. Route 1 intersection at the southern gateway to the town and a very small, perhaps elliptical roundabout where Route 1 intersects with Route 52 and Main Street at the northern gateway. Both could have centers with pavers that are raised a few inches, thereby allowing big trucks to roll over them as needed.
Roundabouts move 30 percent more traffic in a given time than intersections with stop lights and stop signs, he said, and cut personal injury crashes by 90 percent.
“Gateways should draw people out of their cars from that point on,” he said, with plantings, information kiosks and banners, all tools to signal the entrance to a walkable, interesting downtown.
Burden also described how sidewalks with the right “furniture,” such as benches, and tree canopies of the right height can draw travelers out of their cars. He recounted how a pretty fountain once led to him look for half an hour for a parking spot in a downtown, which led to him shopping there and buying a $1,000 camera lens.
“Now, I needed a new lens, but I didn’t need to buy it there,” he said.
Though Burden conceded that some of his recommendations required significant investment, he said that businesses reap far greater profits when the downtowns that host them are vibrant and and pedestrian-friendly.
The workshops also were hosted by the Penobscot Bay Chamber of Commerce and the towns of Camden and Thomaston.
Bring this guy to Bangor ASAP!
You don’t need to slow down traffic. You need to redirect traffic that has no interest in visiting Camden but must drive through the town anyway. Build a bypass that doesn’t significantly increase the time it takes to get from Rockland to Lincolnville. Then remove parking spaces that are within 20 feet of crosswalks. As for rotary’s, the vast majority of them in the northeast have been removed with a redesigned intersection that has traffic lights. Rotary’s cause accidents! Ask anyone who drove to Boston on route 1 twenty years ago.
Bypasses only work if the land alongside them is zoned to not allow development. Otherwise, tow things happen:
Businesses move there, causing traffic delays;
Because the businesses have moved, the towns Main Street dies.
I can list many examples of bypasses that are now developed on both sides, the worst being the one through Topsham (it’s now faster to drive through Brunswick). Another is Waldoboro.
What makes it worse is that this new development is built for vehicle traffic, not pedestrian.
One bypass that has worked well is around Damariscotta/Newcastle, but that only because the property on both sides is mostly wetlands.
Lastly, the Federal Highway Administration disagrees with you about rotaries – but they’re just traffic engineers.
I won’t make light of what you say, some of sounds right on target. Yet the solution is simple, just zone for no business development on the bypass. No death to Main st businesses and people can get where they want to go without driving through downtown. Gosh, talk about a safety issue! I am amazed more people aren’t hit when they enforce pedestrian law by walking out into the moving traffic!
As for the FHA on rotaries I’m not sure what to say about that. My cousins grew up in eastern/central Massachusetts and all the drivers hated traffic circles. There was 1 in Concord (of Theroux fame as well as the battle) on route 2, 1 in Acton, 1 in Lowell, 2 in Arlington, 1 or 2 in Nashua, N.H., and at least 4 along route 1 north of Boston and if memory serves me another 2 on route 1 south of Boston. All of then are gone now. I did a quick check on Wikipedia about this, perhaps not as authoritative as the Highway Administration, and quote,
“The experience with traffic circles and rotaries in the US was almost entirely negative, characterized by high accident rates and congestion problems. By the mid 1950s, construction of traffic circles and rotaries had ceased entirely.”
I recall visiting my cousins many times and frankly I have no polite words for rotaries. If there was a lot of rush hour traffic on route 2 in Concord, a semi limited access highway, traffic would actually come to a standstill for long periods of time because the vehicles already in the rotary impeded access. You may have had a similar experience going through Augusta where there are two. Honestly I’m surprised to read that in the link you give and wonder what is behind the statistics (something I studied) they use.
Rotaries work well on roads with low traffic volume and in rural areas. The benefit is that while all traffic has to slow, most traffic will not have to stop. However, in urban areas or with busy roads, that benefit is lost. The UK has rotaries (roundabouts) everywhere, but you will notice that in busy areas, the rotaries have traffic lights – so they are just a different type of intersection controlled by lights.
If you drive down I-95 to Logan in Boston, you will probably go past the big traffic circle at Portsmouth and then through two large ones on 1A into Logan. I think they all employ some guy full-time to sweep up all the broken glass from fender-benders.
Making traffic go even slower on Rt. 1 in Camden with narrower travel lanes and “traffic-calming” cues, “thought-inspiring” quotes on trash cans, back in parking, and traffic rotaries.
I don’t think so, not even in Camden.
Back-in diagonal parking is an awesome idea. And it would reduce traffic holdups. Think about how often traffic stops in downtown Bangor to let someone back out of the diagonal spots on Main St. If those spots were back-in spots, people would be able to more easily see their “window of opportunity” to pull out of the space; traffic wouldn’t need to be held up.
Yeah – but how do you get to back in when the nitwit behind you stops right on your bumper?
Do they have any suggestions for Bangor??….Nah, didnt think so either:)
Who is “they”? Friends of MIDCOAST Maine? Of course not! They brought him to their towns, now we need to work to bring him to Bangor if we want him.
Bangor’s best option is to extend the BAT bus hours later into the evening. This is so obvious I don’t know why the city council hasn’t unanimously voted to get it done.
Of interest is that many people will drive at the speed the road is designed for, not what is posted. Narrow lanes with parked cars automatically reduce speeds; wider lanes with no obstructions on the sides enable drivers to go faster. One sees this on Rockland’s Main Street everday – at the north end of the historic downtown block, the road widens, parking is banned, and buildings hard on the sidewalk end. You can literally hear the cars accelerate.
But the posted speed limit remains at 25 mph.
Boy do you have your hands full with making both of those towns pedestrian friendly. I am sure that the chiefs of police were consulted, and with both of those s0-called law enforcement “experts” came up with some archaic solution, knowing them the mass. dressed jack booter and the uneducated “person” provided nothing.
A bypass starting with Belfast’s bypass to avoid Belfast , Lincolnville , Camden and Rockport is what’s needed..No worry about any developement in ANY of those towns anyway Gerry…They won’t/ wouldn’t allow it PERIOD…..Just ask Walmart , Lowes(Belfast) , DD (Camden)or KFC(Rockport)…LOL…Probably the most anti-business stretch of Rt. 1 in maine…lol..
I have lived in or near Camden all 43 years of my life. Though pedestrian and slow moving traffic can be a pain, it is only for 2 or 3 months out of the year. I know that nobody wants traffic jammed back any further with traffic lights and the idea of a rotary is absolutely ridiculous. If pedestrians are in crosswalks, people driving stop to let them pass. It’s the people who refuse to use sidewalks that create the most problems. Perhaps if police would start enforcing that law the problem would be lessened. I have never had a problem as a pedestrian walking in Camden. Not once. Let’s not create problems where none exist.
“The lower the speed of vehicles passing through, the higher the retail sales at downtown shops and restaurants.”
If that is true, Wiscasset should have sales greater than South Portland :-) I await the proof.