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Conversations about Creating a Culture of Activity: Profiling the people, places, programs, and policies that help to promote a culture of activity within our communities.
Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited
00:00:00:04 - 00:00:15:00
John Simmerman
What I love. Here is up ahead is an entire section of bicycle oriented infrastructure, and green bike lanes are included in that. Talk a little bit about that because and here's the railroad tracks just like the other. Yeah.
00:00:15:02 - 00:00:34:10
Fionnuala Quinn
So this is a project I worked on. I don't know if you know that. So I'm very familiar with the with the site and it's a concrete site and it's a park, and the park is across the street from local elementary school. And the elementary school brings the children over to the park.
00:00:34:10 - 00:00:52:03
John Simmerman
Hey everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Simon and that is Finola Quinn from Traffic Gardens. And we are going to be nerding out about all things traffic gardens. But before we get to that, I just want to say, if you're enjoying this content here on the Active Towns Channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an active town's ambassador.
00:00:52:03 - 00:01:02:18
John Simmerman
Hey, super easy to do. Just click on the join button right here on YouTube. Okay, let's get right to it with Finola.
00:01:02:20 - 00:01:06:02
John Simmerman
Vanilla, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.
00:01:06:03 - 00:01:09:01
Fionnuala Quinn
Great. I'm delighted to be here today. This is great.
00:01:09:02 - 00:01:17:12
John Simmerman
I have I love giving my guest just an opportunity to introduce themselves. So who the heck is fans?
00:01:17:14 - 00:01:52:27
Fionnuala Quinn
Well, I'm Quinn, you pronounce it beautifully. I'm originally from Ireland. I grew up in Ireland. I came to the US as a newly minted engineer. I am, I'm here many decades now, and I worked as an engineer and I worked in all various different roles. But I have been based in Northern Virginia for many years now, and I run a small business called Traffic Gardens Designs, and I managed to, over the years, turn my engineering work into the field I was most passionate about.
00:01:52:27 - 00:01:59:07
Fionnuala Quinn
So and we're probably going to talk more about that. But that's that's sort of the short version of the story.
00:01:59:14 - 00:02:04:15
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it. Now, what brought you from Ireland to the United States?
00:02:04:16 - 00:02:33:08
Fionnuala Quinn
Well, funny thing, I posted a a little piece on LinkedIn this week where I unearthed a newsletter piece about my arrival in the news. I came on a special program with three other engineers from Ireland. We were sent to the US on this one year program. We had just newly graduated and we were well, there were actually dozens of people on the program, but we were placed with the city of Philadelphia in the water department.
00:02:33:08 - 00:02:41:18
Fionnuala Quinn
So it was intended to be a one year program. It got extended and then I ended up staying. I married into the US.
00:02:41:19 - 00:02:44:03
John Simmerman
So you married into. Yeah.
00:02:44:04 - 00:02:46:26
Fionnuala Quinn
Okay. Yeah. The three went home. Oh, there you go.
00:02:46:27 - 00:03:09:18
John Simmerman
There it is. This is the. This is the exact thing that you were talking about. Yeah, because you were a classically trained civil engineer. And so you were very much, you know, this is part of it is there's it's a very broad based civil engineering education. So yeah, thinking of waterworks and other types of things, bridge building and et cetera, etc., etc..
00:03:09:19 - 00:03:38:28
Fionnuala Quinn
And big city government and how that works, which because civil engineering is very much about local government and how you do things and how you get things done. So what that meant was I had never been a tourist in the US. I had never visited. Within 12 hours of landing at JFK, I was down in City Hall and then sitting at my desk as an engineer, working in a country in a big city I had never visited.
00:03:38:28 - 00:03:47:00
Fionnuala Quinn
So a lot of learning, and I like to say I learned about the US from the inside out because the tourist part came later.
00:03:47:03 - 00:03:55:19
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. That's fabulous. That's fascinating too, because, I mean, you're a 20 something at this point, you know, in a brand new country.
00:03:55:20 - 00:03:57:26
Fionnuala Quinn
Sorry, I just turned 21.
00:03:58:03 - 00:04:07:09
John Simmerman
Yeah. Wow. Oh my gosh. Talk about cultural shock now. Are you. Do you stay in touch with and stay connected to Ireland?
00:04:07:10 - 00:04:31:22
Fionnuala Quinn
Yes, absolutely. My family is still there. You know, I have. I come from a large family. I have a million relatives. In fact, one of my children lives in Ireland and is a local reporter there. So although she was brought up in the US, so we stay in very close contact, it's much easier now to do that where when I first came, you know, you wrote a letter and you waited for weeks to get a response.
00:04:31:24 - 00:04:35:27
Fionnuala Quinn
It's a whole other world now. So yes, we stay in close touch all the time.
00:04:35:27 - 00:04:55:03
John Simmerman
So including the the miracles of being able to do a video recording such as this. Yes. Yeah. I have to ask the, you know, I'm going to solo you out here for just a second so we can get a better view of it. The Bureau of Good Roads talk a little bit about that. I think that's a part of your history.
00:04:55:04 - 00:05:21:13
Fionnuala Quinn
Yes. So I have been working in various things at various points, and I had been working in the bike and consulting firm world as an engineer, and meanwhile I'd been doing a lot of other things. I had been helping run a local bike advocacy organization, and I had been running Stem programs for girls in the school, although this is before we called it Stem.
00:05:21:15 - 00:05:49:20
Fionnuala Quinn
So I had a lot of ideas, and I very much wanted to focus on children in the design world because, you know, my things. I was working on different things, and I decided that we needed more programs, specifically about children and roadway design. Stem was taking off, but it was about rocket ships and coding and all sorts of more glamorous topics.
00:05:49:20 - 00:06:16:02
Fionnuala Quinn
But I actually thought we needed to focus on talking about design to children. So that was my big business idea. And meanwhile, I was incredibly interested in the history of the roads in the US, sort of, you know, as an immigrant and as someone sort of an engineer working in the field and, and knowing how different this was from the world I came from, I was always saying, why is it so different?
00:06:16:07 - 00:06:42:07
Fionnuala Quinn
You know, why is the take on the same thing like getting from A to B so different? And why is the thing we designed to get us from A to B the road so different? So I had gone fairly deep into American history about the roads, and had realized that a lot of what happened came out of DC, and the agency that was responsible was the Bureau of Public Roads.
00:06:42:10 - 00:07:07:01
Fionnuala Quinn
And I had and there was a lot there's a lot of history out there, including my children's local school had been pulled into the history. There was a 1924 movie made by Henry Ford that involved my children's local school and walking to school, and advocated for paving the road so and that. Advocating for paving the roads was part of the Good Roads movement, which had started with bicyclists.
00:07:07:01 - 00:07:32:00
Fionnuala Quinn
But you could see in this 1924 movies where it had transferred over to to the car manufacturers. They never mentioned cars in the movie, but they talk about children walking to school. So I combined these two ideas, the Bureau of Public Roads and the Good Roads movement, into this name, where I was going to do all this work regarding children and design.
00:07:32:01 - 00:07:44:03
Fionnuala Quinn
So that's where I started, and I created all sorts of programs for children. I have moved, you know, I learned from doing and I ended up at Traffic Garden. So that's a different story.
00:07:44:04 - 00:07:57:24
John Simmerman
Yeah, that's a different story. But it's a it's a connected story. And I'm just curious. I mean, they're also there in Virginia. Are you familiar with a doctor, Professor Peter Norton at the University of.
00:07:57:26 - 00:08:01:22
Fionnuala Quinn
Of course I.
00:08:01:25 - 00:08:26:12
Fionnuala Quinn
Quite a few years ago, I had read his book when it came out and I found girl tensed. We were in Charlottesville on a project and I said, can I meet you for lunch? And yes, so ever since we have been very friendly and stayed in touch and just heard him on public radio yesterday talking about these ideas, and that's quite a few years on.
00:08:26:12 - 00:08:48:21
Fionnuala Quinn
You can see how his ideas from fighting traffic made their way, and are still making their way into the the general cultural knowledge which I love, you know, which is part of this. You know, it's always like, why do we do things the way we do them? Like, and how did we get here? So that's always.
00:08:48:24 - 00:09:09:20
John Simmerman
Understanding that history is so incredibly important, which is why I love bringing him back on. He's he's been on the channel three times already, and I'm sure I'll have him on for a fourth. It's just such a joy to to chat with him and really trying to understand and learn from the past in our history is is so incredibly important.
00:09:09:20 - 00:09:48:16
John Simmerman
And and that brings us around to a little bit of, of what you ended up doing is you started focusing in on, as you mentioned, at the traffic gardens. And so early eras of that kind of goes to this series of photos that you shared with us. So why don't you walk us through some of these images and talk a little bit about the history of sort of the safety town and that sort of emphasis on it, because there was that little bit of migration you mentioned the Good Roads movement sort of got co-opted by modem, as Peter calls it, take, take it away.
00:09:48:19 - 00:09:49:22
John Simmerman
Walk us through these images.
00:09:49:24 - 00:10:21:04
Fionnuala Quinn
I'm going to run back a tiny bit into my own history. So as a child, I you know, I grew up in Dublin where kids had complete travel independence. We got ourselves places by ourselves because we had to. We were all in huge families. And, you know, nobody's mother had a car or anything to bring anywhere. So. And yet we were brought on a field trip to Clontarf traffic school at the far side of the city, and it was a highlight of elementary school.
00:10:21:04 - 00:10:41:18
Fionnuala Quinn
We absolutely loved it. It was this small world of streets, and the police lectured us on, you know, biking and driving and being a pedestrian. So if you ask any Dublin person of that era, they will they also will say how great it was. Then fast forward a few decades. I'm working as a in the bike and pedestrian field.
00:10:41:18 - 00:11:10:03
Fionnuala Quinn
I'm in Portsmouth, Virginia on a project and I land at Portsmouth Safety Town and I'm like, oh, this is exactly the same thing. Like there's two of these because I was not aware of Safety Town within America at this point. So I read away. I started to sort of look into that because I thought this really interesting and started to find out about, you know, there was there was information about Safety Town on the internet.
00:11:10:04 - 00:11:33:12
Fionnuala Quinn
Now, I was already aware that there was something else going on at the same time, which was there had been a federal highway study of some European facilities, and it had included something that called a traffic garden in it. And in the recommendations for that study, this is in 2009. It had recommended introducing this idea to the US of traffic gardens.
00:11:33:12 - 00:12:01:28
Fionnuala Quinn
So that was sort of an independent thing. I suddenly realized, oh, safety towns are the same thing. They're already here. Like, this is the thing I went to as a kid. And once I started to learn more about the topic, I realized it had there was a very particular moment in time. It had originated in Mansfield, Ohio, and this is the person who originated the idea who was a patrol officer.
00:12:02:01 - 00:12:31:19
Fionnuala Quinn
His name is Friend Beals, and it was very much his idea. He painted a small town on a parking lot, and he made beautiful traffic signs. And you can see he put an awful lot of work into it. And it was very much it was in response to a lot of what Peter talks about, the safety crisis that had ensued for children after the widespread adoption of motor vehicles in the 1920s.
00:12:31:20 - 00:12:56:26
Fionnuala Quinn
In response to that, there had been all sorts of safety programs, you know, starting in the early 20s, you saw all sorts of things like essay contests and going into schools, you know, lecturing children and, you know, coloring books, you know, so those things were already there and there was storybooks, a lot of storybooks with sort of moral endings about, you know, being safe crossing the street.
00:12:56:27 - 00:13:25:15
Fionnuala Quinn
And Fred Beal's friend was inspired by one of those books. The name of the book was Safety Town Stories. And so he made Safety Town and, you know, just paint very recognizable sort of project. But it was a national sensation instantly. People, you know, federal officials all came down. This is actually the first article that appeared in the newspaper at the time.
00:13:25:15 - 00:13:49:02
Fionnuala Quinn
This is sort of Mansfield's first time reporting on this, but Mansfield was reporting for years later because it was drawing all sorts of people to Mansfield. Life magazine came. Unfortunately, there's no article because it rained on the day. Life came and they never came back. But America, American magazine, I think that's what it's called. They wrote a national article.
00:13:49:04 - 00:14:10:03
Fionnuala Quinn
The newsreels came, they did. And I'm still searching for the original newsreels. I can find them in the newspapers, but I haven't seen the newsreel. You know, the newsreels were shown all over the country and beyond. So this very basic idea, for some reason, we hadn't we hadn't thought about it before, and yet people were seeing something in it.
00:14:10:10 - 00:14:43:12
Fionnuala Quinn
The idea was just a sensation, I mean, in very straightforward idea now. But apparently we hadn't thought about this idea before. People were seeing something in it, like the way children learn, you know, children or children, they have a good time, but they learn by doing. And the Mansfield program grew and Triple-A adopted it almost instantly. So you can see within a couple of years, dozens of safety towns in the DC area.
00:14:43:12 - 00:15:11:20
Fionnuala Quinn
And you can see them popping up in different parts of the country. But they were they all seem to be sort of spontaneous. You know, somebody would see the idea and then they would do it because it's very, you know, straightforward to implement. I do have to say the idea emerged in the UK simultaneously, and I have gone to both of these sites, like the Mansfield site where there's nothing there, just a parking lot, and to the UK site and Tottenham in the UK.
00:15:11:24 - 00:15:35:25
Fionnuala Quinn
It's only months after Mansfield and they seem to be unaware of each other, but it's probably reacting to exactly the same safety issues. You know, the UK was well off, they adopted motor vehicles early, like the like the US and they built this very large town. They call it model traffic area number one which was very sophisticated, all working lights and all sorts of stuff.
00:15:35:27 - 00:15:58:00
Fionnuala Quinn
And it was launched by the Minister for transport. And there's a wonderful video online that you can watch of the launch. And it was a massive hit. Thousands of children came in the first month, but it was launched in 1938, and months later it was closed because of World War two and there was no model traffic area number two.
00:15:58:07 - 00:16:35:09
Fionnuala Quinn
So meanwhile, the Mansfield idea, which was a lot simpler, which was painted lines on the ground, it kept going. It kept growing in different ways. Where the UK idea came to a halt, you can then see later, like in the 1950s in Europe, you can see a lot of places starting to build these nice facilities. So it was sometime kind of after World War two when countries recovered, they started building these again, but meanwhile the US was installing them sort of steadily but just hyper locally in different spots all over the country.
00:16:35:12 - 00:16:36:18
John Simmerman
Interesting, fascinating.
00:16:36:19 - 00:16:39:00
Fionnuala Quinn
That's the early history. There's more history.
00:16:39:01 - 00:17:10:24
John Simmerman
Yeah, there's more history. There's more history to that. It's interesting to, you know, this this kind of transformation, this photo here we've got the tykes in little toy cars, model cars. We moved to this one. And we see the children on trikes at some point. Was there that sort of shift of shifting from the toy cars over to trikes and bikes.
00:17:10:26 - 00:17:42:28
Fionnuala Quinn
It was actually the other way round. And you're, you're zooming in on something that I think is quite important. It started out with the trikes and children on bicycles, because the local Mansfield paper reported this heavily for years. They reported everyone who came to town and everything that happened. I know quite a bit about how it came together, and you can see where they fundraised to get those cars because the original, you know, that was sort of a move up.
00:17:43:00 - 00:18:08:25
Fionnuala Quinn
And a lot of the safety towns that were built in the 60s and 70s have cars and, you know, very nice ones have electric cars and like, kids loved this. The type I went to, it had a pedal car. So you were, you know, and as kids we all wanted the car. But it also had schools and pedestrians because the idea was the three different interactions.
00:18:08:27 - 00:18:33:27
Fionnuala Quinn
But it I think there might have been an underlying assumption that kids already knew how to buy. It was really about, you know, how the streets worked. And it also, I mean, I don't I don't know what the curriculum or programs looked like, but there are little hints that it was sort of of the time and the tone of it was lecturing children.
00:18:33:27 - 00:19:00:20
Fionnuala Quinn
You see a lot about giving them tickets for infractions, and you do see some stuff about creating jails and jailing them and things like that, which is a very different way about thinking about the roads. And I can I can add some more about that later, but it may have been of its time. And if you look at all the other materials of the time, you get a different tone than we would use today.
00:19:00:22 - 00:19:24:26
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, I could totally see motor Dumb supporting this and like going, yeah, we need to indoctrinate these kids early and get them wanting to buy cars when they, when they grow up and knowing the rules of the road. And so I could totally see and I don't know if Peter's run across any of that history as well, but yeah.
00:19:24:27 - 00:19:30:21
John Simmerman
And then here on image is we the Safety Town stories. I think you referenced that earlier.
00:19:30:24 - 00:19:35:21
Fionnuala Quinn
Well it's both adopting cars but it's also staying out of the roads.
00:19:35:27 - 00:20:05:07
John Simmerman
Yeah. Which is also what Motor Dome wants. Yeah I mean that's that was a big part of the movement, as Peter has documented so well, is that, you know, once we made the shift of from streets are for people to streets are for cars and for going fast. Then we made it illegal to cross the street, and we had to push pedestrians off to the side and create crosswalks and invent the, the term, you know, a Jay Walker.
00:20:05:07 - 00:20:21:19
John Simmerman
So yes, that's all part of the sorted history of transforming and shifting what the streets are for into streets or for cars and nothing else. Yeah. Interesting.
00:20:21:21 - 00:20:51:10
Fionnuala Quinn
So there has been a recess and I can explain more about that later. But I like to think that has also given us an opportunity to change what we use. The, you know, this small sets streets for, you know, because it was always just a tool to use for whatever it is at the time we like to work with on children, you know, you know, work with, with children, but then also children just always saw it as a place they like to go.
00:20:51:10 - 00:21:03:26
Fionnuala Quinn
Kids love traffic gardens and they love those small worlds. So there's an instinctive thing where they just love being in a small world and making believe and acting out, you know, adult kind of things.
00:21:03:27 - 00:21:39:10
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. It takes me back to years ago. I helped to run the bike ad program here in Hawaii, and we had a fleet of bikes, and we would go around to all the elementary schools and we would teach, you know, bike handling skills, and we would do the pop up little traffic garden and, and be able to, you know, go through that process and then also skills of, you know, crash avoidance and rock dodge and all of those, those sorts of things.
00:21:39:13 - 00:22:15:15
John Simmerman
And then for the kiddos, this was fourth grade for the kiddos that didn't already know how to ride a bike. We made sure they knew by the end of our time there, it would oftentimes be 2 to 3 days that we would be at each elementary school. We would make sure that those kids that didn't know how to ride a bike actually did know how to ride, which is an interesting phenomena that has emerged recently, is that the number of kids who don't know how to ride a bike is actually increased, whereas you made the assumption that back then it was sort of assumed that all kids know how to ride a bike, because that
00:22:15:15 - 00:22:20:24
John Simmerman
was sort of a rite of passage at the time. Yeah, yeah. Fascinating.
00:22:20:26 - 00:22:51:19
Fionnuala Quinn
Yeah. So definitely like traffic gardens have changed in that they're very much about, you know, kids either learning how to bike or practicing their bike skills. Just because they know how to bike doesn't mean they know how the streets work. So so it's very much about that. And that is a shift. But also there has been a very distinct and steep drop in the rate of children knowing, learning this basic skill in the US of biking.
00:22:51:19 - 00:23:32:02
Fionnuala Quinn
And it's not just the US of their countries, countries you'd be surprised at are reporting the same phenomena. And, you know, we don't know exactly why. We can guess lots of reasons, but it turns out, you know, if you, you know, teaching kids in a group setting is a way to sort of impart those skills, you know, more efficiently and making sure that the kids who are left out also learn the skill and traffic gardens have gotten very tied in certain cities to that idea that the city needs all of the kids to know these skills, and they also need to know how the streets work.
00:23:32:02 - 00:23:58:27
Fionnuala Quinn
So some cities are now taking that on, and traffic gardens are just a piece in that. So that's kind of different to, you know, the safety town of old which was more you go there one time to learn safe. You know about the roads and safety skills. Now it's much more we're practicing about how the streets work. And as we grow older, we learn different things.
00:23:59:02 - 00:24:16:26
Fionnuala Quinn
And it's a launch pad out into the streets because we want our kids to be able to use the streets. And of course, we want them to be able to use them safely. And we have concerns about the fact that many kids no longer learn how to bike. And we're doing all this other work. We're making cities much better.
00:24:17:01 - 00:24:19:19
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, we're doing all this other work. I'm going.
00:24:19:19 - 00:24:20:25
John Simmerman
To take you back to Ireland.
00:24:20:25 - 00:24:21:06
John Simmerman
So this.
00:24:21:06 - 00:24:23:01
John Simmerman
Is a photo from Ireland.
00:24:23:03 - 00:25:01:27
Fionnuala Quinn
Yes. This is a wonderful new facility that it's called Blackwater Park. It's in County Meath and was installed about a year ago. I went to visit on a rainy day and it was packed. And I met with a local made county council official, Cahal, who gave me the tour, and we saw endless kids come. And this is the type where, you know, it's a small actual set of streets rather than what I'm working on and what most of the current work in the US is, which is surface supplied streets, a model of streets on the surface.
00:25:01:28 - 00:25:36:01
Fionnuala Quinn
This is actual streets. Now it's it's simpler in a certain way in that there's no curbs. You know, you don't get into more complicated engineering stuff, which was starting to happen in safety towns. They were getting more and more, you know, just major infrastructure. This is asphalt, you know, some light grading and large set of streets. And it was being used all day when I was there and it was being used, you know, for learning.
00:25:36:01 - 00:25:59:09
Fionnuala Quinn
But there were also things going on, like a set of ten year olds, maybe about 10 or 12 of them involved in some sort of very elaborate game that was taking place throughout the whole place. And the other, the smaller kids were just biking around through this, but the older kids had something that was secret stuff. There was high, you know, so they were very much using it as a play space.
00:25:59:09 - 00:26:24:08
Fionnuala Quinn
And Carl told me at the time, he said, oh, I wish you were here later in the day, because after work, all the rollerblades come in, which was adult rollerblades showing up after work because it was a large, you know, smooth place where they could do this. So very active. I've been in touch with Carl recently, and they now have their second facility that they're working on.
00:26:24:08 - 00:26:52:09
Fionnuala Quinn
And Ireland right now has about ten installations. They're being added regularly. And they were they're going through their own renaissance and it looks more like this. And they have been inspired by a facility that I went to see a number of years ago called the Dungarvan Learn to Cycle Track, which if anyone is going to Ireland, I highly recommend Ride the Waterford Greenway.
00:26:52:14 - 00:27:00:08
Fionnuala Quinn
It ends in done. Garvan. Go see the cycle track. It's a glorious couple of days to do that. It's like beautiful.
00:27:00:09 - 00:27:25:19
John Simmerman
You read my mind. I was just going to ask you for recommendations in Ireland. I've never I've never been and very much need to do so because as I understand it, the the country has some amazing resources that have been allocated and they're trying to make a lot of these changes happen. So it sounds like there's a lot of wonderful stories to profile there.
00:27:25:21 - 00:27:50:19
Fionnuala Quinn
Yes. The greenways, you know, which are kind of like our rails to trails and more recent, but, you know, really wonderful. And like we try and do 1 or 2 every summer like this is, you know, the roads. You know, when I was a child, the number of cars on the roads was less than a quarter of what it is now in Ireland.
00:27:50:21 - 00:28:13:13
Fionnuala Quinn
So it was a lot easier to bike on the roads. There are many places now where I wouldn't dream of biking, that I biked as a child for going to school, but now they have this greenway network and they're really gorgeous. I mean, you know, I've liked American rail trails, so I was a little surprised how really nice some of these Irish ones are.
00:28:13:13 - 00:28:17:14
Fionnuala Quinn
So start with the Waterford Greenway now.
00:28:17:15 - 00:28:42:00
John Simmerman
I think I saw you commenting out on LinkedIn, perhaps earlier today or earlier in the week about adults learning and taking advantage of some of these installations to to learn how to ride. And I look at this image here and I go, oh yeah, this would be perfect. As you mentioned, the adults were there with the rollerblades later on in the day.
00:28:42:01 - 00:28:53:22
John Simmerman
I could totally see this would be a wonderful dual purpose type of facilities for those adults that don't know how to ride. They could learn as well. Or even older children. Yeah.
00:28:53:24 - 00:29:23:19
Fionnuala Quinn
Yeah, absolutely. Like there are designed thing we designed for what we want. You know, they're not a prescribed thing. A lot of what you're seeing are smaller traffic gardens because they're being they are being designed for younger children to learn to ride, but particularly in this new iteration where they are mostly surface applied, we design them for, you know, what it is that we need.
00:29:23:20 - 00:29:44:13
Fionnuala Quinn
And I think the, you know, the big areas that have we're really in the very early days of the the Renaissance, we have a lot of hard surfaces that could that are not being used, that could be repurposed. We have a tremendous number and they could be repurposed for, you know, whatever the programs we either have or we would like to have.
00:29:44:15 - 00:30:12:02
Fionnuala Quinn
I mean, you talked about going into the schools and setting things up. Part of the idea is that, you know, it's a lot of work to set things up. So if it's already there, it's a lot easier on the program person because the value wasn't in the setting up. It was in the time with the learners, and that you'd be more likely to do a program because it's already set up and that other people be like, oh, I could do, you know, something or other.
00:30:12:02 - 00:30:45:10
Fionnuala Quinn
And I think one of the areas that, you know, I've seen these little glimmers and various things going on, adaptive biking, really, there's a lot of interest. We just haven't really seen the projects yet. But you mentioned adult biking. We have seen some of those projects. One of the great examples is the Wagon Wheels Skills Hub in Fort Collins, which is, you know, adult scaled, what I would call the traffic garden.
00:30:45:10 - 00:31:05:21
Fionnuala Quinn
And when you go there, like the signs are eight foot high, you know, which is not the height I'm usually working at. But that's because they're intended for adult garners. And we have other examples like that. And again, if, if, if we're working with this paint on a hard surface, then, you know, we just decide what we're designing for.
00:31:05:21 - 00:31:28:20
Fionnuala Quinn
So I think we'll see a lot more because it actually is not that hard. We have wonderful surface supplied products. Now. Back when friend bales did his he probably was using some hardware paint. We have we have highly engineered materials now that look much more vibrant and last much longer. And so you know and that it helps it look really good, you know, because it's a trick of the eye.
00:31:28:21 - 00:31:56:10
Fionnuala Quinn
You're trying to say, oh, this is a real place. And you're using these materials to do that. Now the image we're looking at here, this is a pop up traffic garden. And it was a really, really fun day. This is in Roanoke, Virginia. And it was an unusual site. It was a circular site. But I worked with the local officials and we, you know, what you're looking at is duct tape and spray chalk and homemade signs.
00:31:56:15 - 00:32:24:01
Fionnuala Quinn
And it was part of a large community event. So, you know, thousands of people were coming by and we had, you know, it was the local TDM organization. So they had tables with the things they wanted to talk about to the general public. You know, they want to talk about, you know, all the different things, like so by setting this traffic garden up, there were two things going on.
00:32:24:07 - 00:32:49:27
Fionnuala Quinn
And one, the adults were all talking to them because the adults are all standing around and they're visiting at the tables, and the children are staying forever. The garden was circular. There was no off. And Roanoke was also, at the time discussing and planning to install a permanent traffic garden. So it was also introducing the idea of a traffic garden.
00:32:49:27 - 00:33:13:26
Fionnuala Quinn
So pop ups are a lot of work to put in, but when people do them, I recommend it's in this type of scenario. Like you, you have some larger goals and you're you're trying to demonstrate how they work both to the public but also to your local officials. This was a great event, and they went on to do a few of these themselves.
00:33:13:26 - 00:33:40:24
Fionnuala Quinn
In subsequent years, it became part of some of their big community events, just as a thing, because it's so popular with families, often families with younger children, I'm not sure they're as catered to in lots of settings. You know, the children are dragging. It's hot. Not when kids see this is what they enjoy. And then like when kids are happy, the families are happy.
00:33:40:26 - 00:33:49:12
Fionnuala Quinn
So this is one of those this was a great day that we were it was next to a band. So that was music the whole time. It was this was this was very fun.
00:33:49:14 - 00:34:20:15
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. In the terminology that I use in the active towns world, is, is I see the world through my public health lens of what the built environment, you know, it does to encourage healthy active living. And I view that as the hardware activity assets, the built environment, the stuff that we can put a pin in a map and we can say, hey, over here, we've got a park, and over here we've got a protected bike lane, and over here we've got a wonderful inviting pathway.
00:34:20:15 - 00:34:43:18
John Simmerman
And oh, by the way, over here we've got this, you know, either interim or temporary or permanent traffic garden. That to me is a hardware activity asset. The software activity assets are the engagement and education activities. And so I love the fact that this was a pop up traffic garden paired with a TDM activity to try to educate the parents on.
00:34:43:20 - 00:35:22:22
John Simmerman
I'm assuming the possibility of, hey, what about walking and biking to school and things of that nature? And to your point, if it's fun and engaging for the kids, there's they're just going to go around and around and around and have a good old time. And that's an opportunity for, you know, those officials, the TDM officials, transportation demand management officials to have those conversations with the parents and say, hey, have you considered maybe walking or biking to school because we have a huge, huge problem of school drop off and pickup, which is just insane that we have that problem here.
00:35:22:25 - 00:35:48:19
Fionnuala Quinn
Yeah. And you know, I mentioned I've worked in advocacy, I worked in design. You know, I've been in all sorts of settings where I wanted to talk about, oh, this is a good thing. We should. And this is why I came around to what I do now. This enables me to talk about those years in a way where people don't react and where they they agree.
00:35:48:21 - 00:36:14:25
Fionnuala Quinn
There's no there's no negativity in my world, which I cannot say about either my advocacy world or bike and pedestrian design. You know, you and and part of the idea is just introducing like, oh, you know, we can change our streets, you know, for these reasons. Like, yes, we do actually like children being safe and being able to get places like we're not opposed to that.
00:36:14:27 - 00:36:51:28
Fionnuala Quinn
So it's a very friendly way of introducing those ideas and part of what I built in my business, because going back to the whole original, you know, introducing children to design is, to me, travel gardens. It's about communicating with children about streets and how they're used and having them think about, well, how are they designed. So everybody who I work on what the traffic garden, they get a whole Stem kit with seven activities to to work with children, not just on biking, but on looking at the design.
00:36:52:00 - 00:37:13:16
Fionnuala Quinn
How would you design the traffic garden? How would you design? You know, the street? Let's talk about speed. So it's all tied to the traffic garden, but that's a way children can get their minds around a small world, the traffic garden. And I am hoping I'm playing a long game. I'm hoping they will apply these ideas to the big world.
00:37:13:16 - 00:37:34:13
Fionnuala Quinn
They will see the connection and go, oh well, maybe speed isn't so good and maybe, you know, maybe we could change this street. So that's my theory. I'll never know if it works, but it's I see it all tied together and I see all the ideas as being, you know, we want to introduce people to these ideas.
00:37:34:15 - 00:38:05:16
John Simmerman
The other thing I love about these types of initiatives to is similar to like an Open Streets event, similar to the bike bus movement that's happening, is it? It reframes what our streets are for. It helps to reinforce again what my coffee mug says, that streets are for people. And I think that that's just a brilliance in that of, of like normalizing that, you know, people should be able to safely get around their community.
00:38:05:16 - 00:38:46:03
John Simmerman
And I love the fact that we also have a Rotary International emblem here. As a former Rotarian myself, I was in rotary here in Hawaii during my first stint of living here. It's wonderful to see, you know, there are those opportunities for partnerships with with groups like a rotary or the Lions Club or many, many others that are that might be out there that might have like a good they might have some manpower and resources to to contribute to this and maybe help sponsor it and make it help, you know, make help this happen within these communities.
00:38:46:03 - 00:38:50:13
John Simmerman
So I'm glad to see that that emblem was there.
00:38:50:15 - 00:39:12:14
Fionnuala Quinn
Yes. And I would say almost every traffic garden and it's actually starting to change. But almost every traffic garden that's gone in has been sort of a community project where, you know, different people come together and play their different roles, you know, including the Rotary Club. We have several Rotary Club traffic gardens going in right now. And, and.
00:39:12:16 - 00:39:35:24
Fionnuala Quinn
You know, everybody has an interest in these things and everybody can bring different stuff to us and is a great project because it's a doable project. It doesn't take that long. It usually doesn't have problems if you can get through it. Like it's really just making decisions and making choices and, you know, within your budget and doing the thing.
00:39:35:25 - 00:40:10:08
Fionnuala Quinn
And then it is the greatest project at the end, you know, it makes for a great ribbon cutting. Everybody's involved. But typically everybody was involved. So now I say that's slightly changing because we're actually seeing a few spots in the country where it's now becoming institutionalized. So it actually works in a slightly different way. But we're still in the early days where people are installing their first traffic garden, and it's very much a community based thing, like there always needs to be a local champion who introduces the idea.
00:40:10:10 - 00:40:33:16
Fionnuala Quinn
And and that's where the pop up is often very important and then sort of builds the team. And then everybody, you know, we have all these great people in every community who know how to get things done and, you know, contribute. In this case, we're looking at West Side Traffic Garden in Roanoke, Virginia. This is the Birmingham traffic garden that got stalled.
00:40:33:19 - 00:41:02:06
Fionnuala Quinn
And the school system, the transportation department, the CDM, the parks were all involved in in making this one happen. And I have to say this was also painted by a robot. So this is the world's first robot installed traffic garden. That's a whole other topic. So there was a lot of excitement about that. But this was also tied into this.
00:41:02:06 - 00:41:34:04
Fionnuala Quinn
The city of Roanoke, Virginia has an annual pedestrian safety campaign, and this was installed as part of that. Children were involved. You know, there was a large Stem workshop for the children at the local school. And the campaign slogans are painted in the traffic garden. So it tied into their pedestrian campaign that year and now they use it.
00:41:34:07 - 00:41:58:28
Fionnuala Quinn
I just saw them recently use it. And I love when I see this stuff happen. You know, it was Bike to School Day, I think was our most recent, and they held a big event prior to Bike to School Day to go over, you know, all the safety topics and the encouragement stuff and and just have fun. It's it's an outdoor community space that's very obviously for gathering.
00:41:59:01 - 00:42:11:13
Fionnuala Quinn
And I love when I see, you know, facilities like this being used in these different ways, you know, again, sort of just this friendly way of talking about what we want to talk about.
00:42:11:14 - 00:42:35:21
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I love it when you look at the uptake of these, and I know that at least one of your websites is sort of keeping track of the number of traffic garden installations, I believe, in the United States. When you look at this uptake, do you get the sense that there's a flywheel of momentum, that they're happening faster and faster and faster?
00:42:35:24 - 00:42:43:01
Fionnuala Quinn
Yes. Now, I have to say I've been dedicated to the topic for a few years now, so I'm talking about it all the time.
00:42:43:02 - 00:42:44:25
John Simmerman
Yeah, 6 or 7 years. Right.
00:42:44:26 - 00:43:11:27
Fionnuala Quinn
So and I have to say, when I started you couldn't there were traffic gardens and there had been a wonderful one in Seattle that was getting lots of recognition and publicity. But if you decided you wanted to do something, there was nowhere to go like so you two had to start from scratch. And this was a huge reason why pivoted to this, because as a civil engineer, I was like, you know, that's not how we do projects.
00:43:11:27 - 00:43:27:08
Fionnuala Quinn
You pick up the manual that tells you how to do it. It's still a project. You're still going to have to make your own local decisions, but you should not be starting from scratch. And I should not be in meetings where we're arguing about what the color of the center line should be. It should just be coming out of a guide.
00:43:27:08 - 00:43:38:01
Fionnuala Quinn
So, so we are now in a different spot. The country now has multiple design manuals.
00:43:38:03 - 00:44:00:00
Fionnuala Quinn
Many of which I worked on because those became my work. That was my projects. I worked with cities and on consulting teams, and we created design manuals, the kind of things that I wanted expected to be there that you pick up and it says, here's how you organize the project, here's the timeline. You know, here's the dimensions, here's the, you know, so you have the guidance.
00:44:00:00 - 00:44:30:16
Fionnuala Quinn
So that makes things a lot easier. So that's number one. Number two, one of the things that I had an issue with was the fact that we were calling these like I recognized these were all just small sets of streets for learning and fun, but we were calling them all different names. So I now have recorded 38 names in English, and I have I have them in all different language for the same thing.
00:44:30:19 - 00:44:52:14
Fionnuala Quinn
So as a consequence, we weren't really recognizing them as a thing, and we weren't sharing information and we weren't sharing how to do it. We were reinventing the wheel over and over and over. Well, again, that wasn't good because that that meant it was just for the very enthusiastic, who could do that kind of thing. We weren't making it easy.
00:44:52:16 - 00:45:11:09
Fionnuala Quinn
So now I've tried to organize us under a single term, traffic gardens, because that was the federal term used. People can still call them whatever they want locally, of course, like if you want to say safety town or traffic playground, that's fine. But just saying it's a type of traffic garden. And then here are the traffic garden design manuals.
00:45:11:09 - 00:45:35:21
Fionnuala Quinn
Here's here are the other examples. Here are the case studies. All of that is there now. And that's having a huge impact. And the design manuals we have have started to go into different topics, like the Seattle Traffic Garden Guide is more about schools, how to do traffic gardens in schools, which is slightly different to how to do traffic gardens in parks, which is more what some of the others are about.
00:45:35:24 - 00:46:01:14
Fionnuala Quinn
And we have manuals for how to do pop ups now. So we have all those things. So that definitely facilitates projects. Then by making the map I'm saying, look, we have all these in all different places and you can go visit them. And there's a lot of going to visit installations, particularly in hotspots where it's easy to go see them or hold a tour and show and show on the tour.
00:46:01:15 - 00:46:29:09
Fionnuala Quinn
Like we've got different types. You know, I ran a tour in Alexandria where we went to the adult scale traffic garden, the very much the neighborhood children traffic garden and one other one. Oh yeah, the school stem based traffic garden. So there's just a huge boost there in getting started and that we're sort of operating under a single term.
00:46:29:12 - 00:46:58:21
Fionnuala Quinn
The word traffic garden is going into grants and occasionally policies, which again when I started, because we're very creative in the US, people were able to go off and get money, but they had to work hard to do that because they had to explain what a traffic garden was. And, you know, nobody knew. Now, the word traffic garden is in some of the grants and we're into repeat grants in certain places.
00:46:58:24 - 00:47:27:07
Fionnuala Quinn
If you look at safe routes to school, Oregon, you'll see they have a pilot program going right now where, you know, schools apply and several schools get selected each year. And they are assisted and, you know, they get technical assistance in providing traffic garden. If you look at Massachusetts, there's a different version of this in Seattle now, we did the guide and they decided to put a traffic garden in every elementary and K-8 school.
00:47:27:07 - 00:48:02:08
Fionnuala Quinn
And they're very far in. They have 20 something in. So they're working off of a document to to install traffic gardens, and they have a full time staff person in house who manages that. D.C.. I wrote guidelines for traffic gardens that went into the architects RFPs. So when an architect gets picks up the massive document for school modernization, you know, like a $10 million project, there's 11 pages in there that says, and you have to do a garden, and here's what you have to do.
00:48:02:08 - 00:48:29:21
Fionnuala Quinn
So they go in automatically in D.C.. So we're starting to see institutionalization in certain places. And, you know, there's there's there's spots in the country where this is really going on. California. We have a couple of spots Monterey installed 13 I think in the schools, you know. So you're seeing them cluster where, you know, they've done the first one.
00:48:29:27 - 00:48:51:07
Fionnuala Quinn
They've realized, you know, this is a tool. This ties with other things they're working on. Because almost always people are working on other things. Like they have the All Kids Bikes program, which are amazing. You know, where they're bringing back balanced bikes into kindergarten. They may have an in school, you know, biking curriculum through PE. And this is becoming an element of that.
00:48:51:07 - 00:49:19:22
Fionnuala Quinn
So you're really seeing some pickup in certain places. Milwaukee installed 85 traffic gardens in their schools. So they're out in the lead. We've more than doubled the number of traffic gardens in the US in the last two years. There's a lot more in the works. Again, this part of why I love the map, because I can show that I actually have a leader board of states underneath to try and get states competing with each other.
00:49:19:25 - 00:49:45:10
Fionnuala Quinn
You know, there is something going on, but in a certain way, when if you say, you know, if you point at places like Seattle, well, then other places are like, oh, well, you know, we should be doing something like, should we be doing this? You know, so the news is going out and it's having an influence and the tools are there and a lot more consulting firms provide the service there.
00:49:45:13 - 00:50:06:04
Fionnuala Quinn
You know, you can go places to get assistance with traffic gardens. And there's just a lot more collective knowledge on the topic that's making it a lot easier. I will say we've also we're starting to go into another phase, which we went into in the 60s. You know, the original traffic garden was just painted on the ground like I do.
00:50:06:06 - 00:50:30:22
Fionnuala Quinn
And then we had the great idea of like, let's build real streets. And that's what we started doing in the 60s, and we built a lot of those small cities, and they were very they're beautiful. I mean, I think the peak probably was Knoxville, Tennessee, or Cobb County, Georgia, incredible cities. But we're beginning to see that again.
00:50:30:24 - 00:50:44:12
Fionnuala Quinn
Several communities are working on actual, you know, small worlds. And that's that's a much harder project. That's that's real engineering. But those are in the works right now.
00:50:44:15 - 00:51:08:04
John Simmerman
It was fabulous. I've zoomed in on this aerial overhead of this particular installation that you had mentioned earlier. Walk us through the elements that are depicted in this image, and go ahead and describe it for the listening only audience to, so that they can kind of visualize what is included with this particular installation.
00:51:08:07 - 00:51:30:19
Fionnuala Quinn
So this was a parking lot, a second parking lot next to a baseball diamond. So they they realized, oh, we don't need the second one. So it was a tiny bit narrow. And I'll talk about that. But the approach, if you notice on the approach is a big yellow rectangle. And that says welcome because this is open all the time.
00:51:30:21 - 00:51:53:22
Fionnuala Quinn
The idea is that we want people to feel comfortable just coming and playing. And part of the idea was a lot of people come for the baseball diamond, and it's next to a school that this would be something where you and that you knew you were welcome. You can't see it very clearly. But next to this small pathway that's connecting, there's a beautiful information sign where there's an image of the traffic garden on the side.
00:51:53:22 - 00:52:19:16
Fionnuala Quinn
Because again, when you're standing on the ground, you can't see this. You don't quite know what you're looking at. So the sign shows the image the graphic image and it it's very clearly welcoming people in and saying some encouraging things. Often those signs will actually make some suggestions of things to learn. And then it'll add a few little things about helmets and whatever our rules.
00:52:19:16 - 00:52:45:08
Fionnuala Quinn
But it isn't a, you know, long list of rules. It's a welcome to the facility. So I think that's the first thing. The site was narrow, and that's actually why we had that angular cross street, because the city also wanted to talk about sort of the new facilities they were building, which were like green bike lanes and bike boxes.
00:52:45:08 - 00:53:07:09
Fionnuala Quinn
They wanted those for lessons. And when you're working in a small space with small streets and you're also trying to maintain a buffer around the edge because you don't want to be up against the edge, you know, you want a little recovery space. And and it's not just recovery space. You want a space where adults can stand and, you know, you can line up bikes and, you know, you can have observers.
00:53:07:10 - 00:53:31:15
Fionnuala Quinn
So we had to be, you know, we had to play around with the design a bit to come up with. How could we have a street with the green bike lane and the bike boxes. And you know, we wanted a four way stop. You know, there are certain things we wanted. These had all been defined. And then it becomes kind of a geometry exercise of how to do that.
00:53:31:15 - 00:53:58:27
Fionnuala Quinn
We did hold a we had a city workshop where public officials were invited. And we had we we had laid out three examples, you know, concepts of how we could get the traffic garden to work. And staff had overlay tracing paper and they could make edits. And that's how we ended up with this design. And then we also had things on there because it is about imaginative play.
00:53:58:28 - 00:54:26:02
Fionnuala Quinn
We have a little railroad crossing and those two little blue train stations, because a lot of children all use it differently. And for some it's like they're pretending. And, you know, that's part of what the railroad is about, a very popular pretend element for children, and also something that's very easy to do in a traffic garden because it's straight lines around about this.
00:54:26:03 - 00:54:49:20
Fionnuala Quinn
We only have one small roundabout here. I often have quite a few more because roundabouts are a highlight. They're fun, but they also keep the flow, because part of what you're trying to do in a traffic garden is keep the flow going. I would say this one is not quite as flowy as some. Again, as I say, we actually had constraints here, which when you look at this.
00:54:49:21 - 00:55:14:13
Fionnuala Quinn
It's not so obvious. We have a lot of messaging on the surface. The little square cut out in the corner, it's a one way loop, but we have all the traffic signs painted on the ground and the names of the traffic signs next to them, because anything you can turn into paint at relatively low cost using stencils, you know, and that can be messaging you can put on the ground at the far end.
00:55:14:14 - 00:55:33:26
Fionnuala Quinn
You can see a little parking area. Now, usually parking may be closer to the entrance as an actual tool for, let's say, someone organizing a program to set bikes up or something. But again, you end up with different situations and in this case, just there was an odd little area there and we decided to turn it into parking.
00:55:33:27 - 00:56:07:10
Fionnuala Quinn
And off of the photo there's a, there's a shed which is used for storing the, the signs. It's a, a somebody in the city donated it because it was a Covid testing shed and it became. Yeah, was left over there. You can see a little bit of it there. And that became the place where the portable signs, because those portable signs that are out there, they go into the shed when there isn't a program on, they have a heavy base at the bottom to keep them up, and they've got little wheels on them so they can be dragged into the shed easily.
00:56:07:10 - 00:56:37:01
Fionnuala Quinn
But that parking area, you know, that's a key. Little fun part of a traffic garden. Kids love parking and then on parking. And usually in this case, we do not have the symbols on there, but usually there's like the parking symbols and the handicap symbol. And, you know, because it becomes an element of the learning, you're not it's not the kind of learning where you're hitting a child over the head, but you are sort of saying, these are part of our world.
00:56:37:01 - 00:57:01:24
Fionnuala Quinn
And if you have something like the handicapped symbol there, it gives the adults a chance to say, oh, look, you know, and in my experience, even with our curriculum, you put an adult down in this setting with young children, adults almost automatically go into, oh, look, look at the crosswalk. That's for they, they start doing the instruction because it's just basic level instructing.
00:57:01:24 - 00:57:22:15
Fionnuala Quinn
But you know, children may or may not be getting that. If you have children who are always in the back seat of a car and are not actually walking down to the local post office or whatever with their parent, you know, which is how I grew up. They may not be getting those little tidbits about how we put our infrastructure together.
00:57:22:15 - 00:57:32:09
Fionnuala Quinn
So I always hear adults going straight to that sort of instructing, like, like, I don't know who told them they all had to do it, but they all do it.
00:57:32:10 - 00:58:08:19
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, I love that, I love that, I love to that, you know, on this image, you know, we see, like you said, it's a reflection of some of the elements that you would expect to see in the community. So you've got that green painted bike lane there. You've got the railroad crossing eye. To me, that just warms my heart, because I really want to see us reflecting to a better image of what our built environment is like, and also what we aspire to be like in the future.
00:58:08:19 - 00:58:40:27
John Simmerman
We've got this major transformation happening, you know, globally, around the world that's trying to, you know, reclaim our streets and make the environment once again safer for all ages and abilities and installing, you know, really meaningful infrastructure that is hopefully making it, you know, safer for everybody. And so, you know, having the elements of, you know, the bike lanes represented in the traffic garden, I think is is amazing.
00:58:41:00 - 00:59:16:00
John Simmerman
This is the video that I mentioned earlier of, of one of the traffic gardens that I've profiled. This is the one in Dayton, Kentucky. So just across the river from from Cincinnati. And, and this was actually a tour from the Congress for New Urbanism, the CNU tour that was hosted that year. And so this is a whole bunch of adults from all over the country experiencing many of them for the first time ever, any kind of traffic garden.
00:59:16:00 - 00:59:37:16
John Simmerman
And, you know, coming up here, we've got multiple roundabouts, which you and I both love, but also what I love here is up ahead is an entire section of bicycle oriented infrastructure, and green bike lanes are included in that. Talk a little bit about that because and here's the railroad tracks just like the other. Yeah.
00:59:37:19 - 01:00:02:15
Fionnuala Quinn
So this is a project I worked on. I don't know if you know that. So I'm very familiar with the, with the site and it's a concrete site and it's a park, and the park is across the street from local elementary school. And the elementary school brings the children over to the park to, you know, for PE and some stuff.
01:00:02:18 - 01:00:27:12
Fionnuala Quinn
And, you know, this is one of those examples where the geometry was very unusual. You're working with the space you've got, like sometimes you go into these projects and I think this is an example. We went into it not quite knowing the site. So there's a lot going on on the site. But you know, we were the parks gave us, you know, access to all of this space.
01:00:27:12 - 01:00:51:06
Fionnuala Quinn
And it had, you know, when you start to look at these sites, you're like, well, this is an amazing covered feature. You know, there's a huge open covered area which it makes for a great classroom, outdoor classroom area. So that's really great for programs. You know, that makes it easier. So we integrated the streets into the you know, you went you go under the shelter with the streets.
01:00:51:06 - 01:01:20:06
Fionnuala Quinn
And I think there's a railroad going through the streets all through the space. Also, you know, we just had all the different features, you know, in the areas where we had more space. You know, this is it's the local bike advocacy organization who were instrumental behind this. So they, of course, are very interested in us talking about, you know, reflecting the the work that's either going on on the streets or that we would aspire to and introducing those.
01:01:20:08 - 01:01:40:01
Fionnuala Quinn
So there were some more open areas. There had to be some work done to repair the concrete so we could use all that space. But that's all very doable. Once you have the space and someone has granted you the use of a site, then it just becomes this sort of, well, how can we use this space and what are we using it for?
01:01:40:03 - 01:02:02:04
Fionnuala Quinn
So that ended up being a quite a big traffic garden because we, we made the entrance street all the way back out to the road. And we also that was an example where there was Stem programs with the local children. There was pop up programs, all the classrooms got Stem kits. So we hope that they're looking at it in this broader way.
01:02:02:09 - 01:02:33:08
Fionnuala Quinn
And there was some before and after testing, like pre and post testing of the children's knowledge on some aspects, which was very interesting. Now it was a great project and the these, these are all great projects you know, but again it's just sort of using design skills and space and the materials we have just to create something out of almost nothing.
01:02:33:13 - 01:02:36:27
Fionnuala Quinn
You know, like that was negative space.
01:02:37:00 - 01:03:21:02
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. One of the things that that, that I reflect on, since I have the privilege of traveling all around the world, documenting what cities are doing to become more activity promoting places, I have had the honor and privilege of of spending quite a bit of time in the Netherlands. And so I'm able to really understand at a much deeper level how that, you know, how they are approaching a lot of this and how kids are brought up in an environment where in most cities and most communities, they there's an expectation that they're going to be able to get around by themselves.
01:03:21:02 - 01:03:49:13
John Simmerman
And so much so that in most municipalities, the school districts are set up in such a way that by the time they hit 11 or 12 years old, they are going through their examinations out on in the real world, out in the streets and and demonstrating that, yeah, they can get around because in the subsequent years there is that expectation that they're going to be able to get to all of their destinations under their own power, on their their Dutch bikes.
01:03:49:15 - 01:04:19:26
John Simmerman
And what I, what I love about the example of this, and I've had the opportunity to interview multiple parents over there and talk about how they they grab their kids and they say, well, they're with us all the time anyways on the bikes. And then when they're old enough to ride their own bikes there, the streets are like their their learning grounds and the pathways, the feets pods are wide enough so that the parent can ride side by side with them and and help guide them along.
01:04:19:26 - 01:04:42:23
John Simmerman
And they're constantly talking with them about, okay, and now we're coming up to a road crossing. This is when we do this. It just warms my heart. And it just it's so cool to see that. And so I see this as sort of like a, a reflection of trying to duplicate in a more controlled environment because our streets are not that safe.
01:04:42:24 - 01:05:24:24
John Simmerman
I like to say that 60 to 70% of the Dutch cycle network is actually a form of shared space, shared streets, whether it's your feets thoughts or your local access roads that are paved in red brick and the 30km/h is the maximum speed. So it's a little bit of a different context than all of that. But if if I were to aspire and have the United States aspire to something in the future, when we talk about safe Systems approach to creating safer streets, it would be just that trying to transform our local access streets into being, you know, again, streets for people so that kiddos can get around.
01:05:24:24 - 01:05:54:02
John Simmerman
And I've been documenting a lot recently about some of our quieter residential streets that maybe have some traffic calming or maybe have some traffic diversion. And so they become low volume, low speed environments. And these are typically the streets to the parents and school officials are utilizing for bike busses to get kids to school. And again, normalizing that streets are for people and that we should expect to see them out there.
01:05:54:06 - 01:06:11:12
John Simmerman
But I, I didn't really have a question there. I just wanted to kind of give that in context and then set up the two different websites that you have. So we're looking now at the Traffic Gardens info site. Walk us through what the audience can expect to see at the site.
01:06:11:19 - 01:06:37:19
Fionnuala Quinn
Yeah. So I had, you know, I got into this space and I kept building materials like I had to start with typology and, you know, and I kept putting everything I was building online and but also I was operating a business. So I was advertising my services. And I recently split because there's so much information that I had put up.
01:06:37:19 - 01:07:03:18
Fionnuala Quinn
We had generated so much more that I decided that needed to be clear, that that was separate, and that people had a place to go and get information. And if you look at the The Traffic Gardens Infocom website, there's a resource page which I maintain anytime something new comes out like Vancouver just published a wonderful guide for children that we put up, and we put it there.
01:07:03:18 - 01:07:26:14
Fionnuala Quinn
So there's a place to go and you can download and, you know, get either short. These are two pagers that you can download with tips like all sorts of different things. Everything is feeding to the same idea, which is, you know, we want children to be able to go places by themselves and get those skills. So every all the resources are there.
01:07:26:16 - 01:07:54:25
Fionnuala Quinn
But then if let's say you want to build a traffic garden, there are pages about that and introducing you to the ideas and showing you what's going on in the world. So I have a global page, I have a global map. I track traffic gardens throughout the world. I have a few thousand on there, and I have been to the Netherlands and seen their traffic gardens, and met with the school school officials to talk about how they're using traffic gardens, because they're using it in a different way, because their children are so different.
01:07:54:27 - 01:08:28:25
Fionnuala Quinn
And I've studied the office of a teacher, watching as she talks about how they use them, talking about why they still have traffic gardens, but that every child, you know, you know, I'm watching children just going by on their bikes in this suburban area because they can get places. So part of what I've just tried to do on the information website is just show all these are out there, like just start showing them and then starting to highlight the different countries.
01:08:28:27 - 01:08:50:24
Fionnuala Quinn
Bulgaria has installed thousands of traffic gardens, so I've got a little bit about that. And you know, I'm trying to write global stories in my spare time, but I have no spare time. So, so I do maintain this website. Anything new is straight there. Anytime I discover a traffic garden in the in the US, it's straight on the map.
01:08:50:24 - 01:09:17:22
Fionnuala Quinn
I want people to know I want to, and if you zoom in on that map, you will see there's hundreds and hundreds of these because we've been having this idea throughout the world for decades. Like, how do we communicate with our children and how do we launch them into our built world? I know how I did it, but I lived in a different kind of world where I could walk with my parents.
01:09:17:22 - 01:09:39:27
Fionnuala Quinn
They could tell me these things. I could be given freedom. Slowly, at age six, I was allowed to cross the street to the shops with my money. But that's not the reality. That wasn't my children's reality. My American children. I like to say they were materially much better off than me, but they were independence deprived. But I did my best.
01:09:39:27 - 01:09:40:26
Fionnuala Quinn
I did my best.
01:09:40:28 - 01:10:00:02
John Simmerman
All right. Hey, I'm going to I'm going to real quickly say, since I've zoomed in on this and I have an affinity towards the west New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming. If you have any, be sure to let us know. And if you don't have them, why not?
01:10:00:04 - 01:10:23:06
Fionnuala Quinn
I will tell, like I'm kind of ahead of the map so I know where there's talk. Yeah. So there's talk in New Mexico. There's talk in some of these places. It does take a little while for projects to get done. But it, it is a new idea and it has to be introduced. And there are people doing things to introduce it.
01:10:23:06 - 01:10:49:21
Fionnuala Quinn
But. Yes. And if you notice, if you look at the map, it's very heavy around Ohio and the surrounding states. It just which dates all the way back to patrol officer friend. Like he had a huge influence with his idea. And so anyway, you can see things on the map if you zoom in on Milwaukee, it's just.
01:10:49:22 - 01:11:14:06
Fionnuala Quinn
And if you if you go to the global map, if you zoom in on Bulgaria, we're still we're still adding them to the map. And then I discover hotspots regularly, like the Austrian cycling organization. Just got in touch with me last week to give me the information from their map. So we will be adding that Austria will get a lot more.
01:11:14:08 - 01:11:34:09
Fionnuala Quinn
So yeah. So it's it's really this idea that one that we want to talk to children, how do we do that. And this isn't the only thing. This is part of all the other things we want to do. But also what I want to do, like my heart is an engineering heart. So I'm also looking at how did they do it?
01:11:34:09 - 01:11:55:02
Fionnuala Quinn
I want to learn about did they why do they have so many? Do they have some very efficient way of doing this? That was part of why I went to Bulgaria. How how did they do thousands like. Well, they do have an efficient way. They have three templates which they give to schools and they have a key that goes with it that tells them how to adapt it to the school.
01:11:55:02 - 01:12:17:22
Fionnuala Quinn
So, you know, these are lessons that I hope I will be able to introduce in different places, you know, so that we learn from each other globally as well as within the US, because the stuff I'm doing, that's not the only way to do it. And it's not the point. The point is, you know, reaching children and reaching more children rather than some children.
01:12:18:00 - 01:12:40:04
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, I love it. And again, this is your other site. So this is the traffic gardens. Com so folks you can go to this site. You can shop some of the plans. You can look at some of the resources that are there as well to close us out. Any final comments that you want to leave the audience with?
01:12:40:07 - 01:13:07:00
Fionnuala Quinn
That's a hard one really, because there's so much like I have enjoyed doing this because I've been working in this area for a while, I've been trying a lot of things like, ultimately, I want to get more people on bikes, and I want people to be safe and I want my children to be safe. I want people to be able to go from A to B, and some of what I want is just what I had in my life, which was straightforward.
01:13:07:00 - 01:13:46:01
Fionnuala Quinn
I got myself around and I knew how important that was. So I do think applying the US is very good at getting things done and organized, because it's a country that had to build everything from scratch. So people are very good at organizing, pulling together, getting money, doing this thing. And so I think creatively applying these great skills that are in the US to this problem, which is how do we get kids onto our streets safely, and the whole issue of having safer streets.
01:13:46:01 - 01:14:05:14
Fionnuala Quinn
I am all for that. Of course. I'm just not focusing on that 100% support. We have to keep that work going. But if we do all that, and we don't also have children who are brought up with the idea of using the streets and having skills and independence, we need to just apply our creative ideas to that and support it.
01:14:05:15 - 01:14:29:09
Fionnuala Quinn
Like these. These are very low cost projects. I figured they widened the highway close to where I live, and I calculated that for the same cost as they widened that highway and that was a major widening. We could have installed a traffic garden in every elementary school in the US, so that would be a very wide introduction of these ideas, and I'm hoping that we'll all get built upon.
01:14:29:09 - 01:14:52:14
Fionnuala Quinn
And I do want people to recognize one other thing, which is because the US was well off. It built a lot of hard surfaces, which it has abandoned, and they've been left behind all over the place. We we build nicer basketball courts. We build tennis courts over here instead. We've left all this. It's sitting there. We look right past it.
01:14:52:15 - 01:15:16:04
Fionnuala Quinn
Why not put it to work? I mean, in an ideal world, it would be pulled out and we wouldn't have to run off. In the meantime, why not make it work for us? So I guess that's the long answer. But it's that applying our creative ideas to the problem in hand, which is how do children get these skills and independence and use what we've got?
01:15:16:06 - 01:15:20:07
Fionnuala Quinn
We've got a lot of leftover asphalt. So that's kind of it.
01:15:20:09 - 01:15:51:20
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it. And for everybody tuning in today, you know, from a public health perspective, yeah, I encourage every community to consider doing this. Multiple facilities if possible. And don't forget to have that active mobility infrastructure represented in that environment. Build some trails, build some pathways, build the the the bike lanes that are there. Again, be aspirational for the streets that you want to be building in your community for the future.
01:15:51:20 - 01:16:00:18
John Simmerman
And again, streets for people love it. Thank you so much. This has been such a joy and pleasure having you on the Active Towns podcast.
01:16:00:20 - 01:16:08:19
Fionnuala Quinn
Great. Thank you. Well, thank you for this opportunity. And I obviously it's a wonderful conversation and thank you for all your work.
01:16:08:20 - 01:16:23:06
John Simmerman
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01:16:23:06 - 01:16:40:02
John Simmerman
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01:16:40:03 - 01:17:01:16
John Simmerman
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01:17:01:18 - 01:17:11:01
John Simmerman
Again, thank you so very much. And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers and aloha!