LEWISTON — Medium-sized cities, like those in Maine, need to focus on giving people reasons and safe opportunities to step out of their cars if they hope to thrive, according to speakers at an urban planning conference in Lewiston on Thursday.
More than 250 planners, developers and state and municipal officials from across Maine came to Bates Mill Building No. 1 for a series of discussions about the latest trends in urban planning.
Called “Build Maine, a Tactical Approach to Growing Maine Towns and Cities,” the event featured presentations by some of the top theorists in urban planning.
Keynote Speaker Jeff Speck, author of “Walkable City, on the Secret to Downtown Success,” outlined his steps to making downtowns walkable.
Pedestrians need a reason to walk and the walk must be safe, comfortable and interesting, he said.
“A percentage of Americans can’t drive — they are too young, too old or too poor to drive,” he said. “If we need to make a landscape that works for them, we’re only going to do it effectively if we can create pedestrians by choice, to make the larger group that can drive choose to walk. To do that, the walk has to be better than the drive.”
Speck said studies of cities show that transportation system changes can have counterintuitive results. Widening roads does not usually lead to smoother traffic flow, for example.
“People go faster on wider streets,” Speck said. “Increased lane widths are responsible for approximately 900 additional traffic fatalities per year. How long do we have to say this before people start acting on it?”
Instead, smaller lanes on busy city streets tend to slow down traffic, lessen congestion and make accidents less frequent.
He recommended narrower traffic lanes in most cities, 10 feet instead of the standard 12. Changes can be made cheaply by repainting lanes, and that can leave room for more on-street parking and bicycle lanes.
He also argued for replacing many signals at traffic intersections with four-way stops, saying they are safer for motorists and pedestrians.
“We feel safer at a four-way stop than we do at a signalized intersection,” Speck said. “If you think about it, it’s pretty clear why: Every car stops at the intersection and nobody goes through it at more than five mph.”
Lewiston City Administrator Ed Barrett started discussions off, saying cities need to think creatively to thrive in the future. He noted that municipal budgets are already tight and taxes are increasing. New development and redevelopment are the best ways to thrive.
“You have to do planning the right way. You have to get people involved,” Barrett said. “It wasn’t planners just planning. It was the planners listening and getting people’s input — almost becoming scribes — and then taking everything they’ve heard and filtering it back through their planning background and experience.”
The conference was sponsored by the Congress for New Urbanism Maine, the Maine Municipal Association, the Maine Real Estate and Development Association and GrowSmart Maine.
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