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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
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:17:17
Mike West
From the advocate point of view, a planner working within a city. You know, obviously, you know, marketing effects, my director that has this kind of analogy, but it's like sometimes when you're working with people, if you just yell at them and calm down, whatever, you know, they just shut down, they're not going to listen to you. So people that I work with, they're good people.
00:00:17:17 - 00:00:36:06
Mike West
They want to do the right thing. Have they learned a lot of this stuff that I have? Maybe not. But we kind of have to share and help them along the way and see, you know, if this is something they can get on board with. So. So so it's kind of like the analogy is it's like taffy. You have to kind of slowly stretch it out and it'll keep going.
00:00:36:06 - 00:00:42:13
Mike West
But once you get going, you can feel pretty quick and they'll stay intact. But you try to do it real quick. Sometimes you just break it and then you shut down.
00:00:42:18 - 00:01:06:27
John Simmerman
Everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Simmerman and this is a very special episode with Mike West from Daybreak in South Jordan, Utah. And he also is a planner for the city of Lehi, Utah. This is a very long video because we're like nerding out on all sorts of Dutch bicycle infrastructure ends well as the work that he's doing right there in Utah.
00:01:07:03 - 00:01:19:08
John Simmerman
So we're going to just jump right into it with Mike. Mike West, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.
00:01:19:10 - 00:01:22:26
Mike West
Yeah, so great to be here. I'm honored to be on the podcast with you.
00:01:22:28 - 00:01:28:26
John Simmerman
So Mike, I love having my guest just say a few words about themselves. Who is Mike West?
00:01:28:28 - 00:01:50:29
Mike West
Yeah, so I'm a city planner in city planning for 12 years now here in Utah. I work for Lehigh City. I've really got into city planning. Honestly, as a kid, when I was a kid, I would play with Legos and create little cities and skyscrapers and things like that out of Lego. So ever since I was four or five years old, I started doing that.
00:01:50:29 - 00:02:05:17
Mike West
So I really, really started there as it. Yeah. And here's an example of a Legos I built, which unfortunately at the time I didn't know any better. I put a giant freeway right through the center of it, but yeah, built some contacts.
00:02:05:17 - 00:02:10:29
John Simmerman
I tell you, kid, I used to. Yeah.
00:02:11:02 - 00:02:29:23
Mike West
And I started there. I used whatever I could to to build cities. In this case, I had a little bottle caps and stuff, but I set out every little brick was a building, and I'd lay out these big cities. So ever since I was five or six years old, I was doing this. So I was just some reason I just really loved cities and just really interested me.
00:02:29:25 - 00:02:50:27
Mike West
As I grew older and became a teenager. I always kind of liked cities and a lot of it I went back to. I just thought skyscrapers were so cool too, and like seeing these cool big tent cities in New York City, all this kind of stuff. But let's give a teenager a little bit of a troublemaker. But I got really into cars, so came a bit of a car enthusiast, honestly.
00:02:51:00 - 00:03:16:12
Mike West
So I had this kind of these years and it kind of bled out. But I even when I was in my twenties, you know, I'd go out and read Fun Cars I thought was just so cool. You know, I don't know if you could have honestly found a bigger car as it is through this than me at the time, which is kind of weird considering what I advocate for now, but it's kind of like you've I've seen that perspective and had that mindset at one point, and I can kind of see transform to where I'm at now.
00:03:16:12 - 00:03:22:18
Mike West
So definitely, in my opinion, it helps to know where I've been and where I'm going.
00:03:22:20 - 00:03:55:18
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. Well, what's interesting too is, you know, that concept and glad you kind of brought that up from like a car enthusiast, you know, perspective is in fact, I've had Ethan Tufts on who is a car enthusiast, who has like an entire channel about cars in. And he kind of had this revelation that as a car enthusiast, it's actually better for him because he loves to drive, but he hates, you know, the gridlock of of car dependency and he hates car dependency.
00:03:55:18 - 00:04:20:18
John Simmerman
And so he's a car enthusiast that, you know, kind of, you know, realized that, you know, being able to have choice, mobility, choice and being able to get around in other ways is hugely helpful to people who love driving cars. And I know you have a a a car enthusiast day days, you know, video here. So what's the story behind this?
00:04:20:21 - 00:04:40:12
Mike West
Yeah, yeah. For a few years in a row, I'd rent a fun car for my birthday every year. And this is me actually driving a Lamborghini, you know, on the freeway there. So yeah. At it's I thought was the coolest thing ever. But yeah, just like you said, it's sometimes to make driving better, you have to give options for other modes.
00:04:40:12 - 00:04:49:26
Mike West
So that's one thing I really stood out to me when I visited the Netherlands last year, but it's like in fact they've been rated often as being one of the best places to drive because.
00:04:49:26 - 00:05:17:20
John Simmerman
Exactly. They're just going to say, Yeah, I mean, because of their mobility balance. In other words, being able to have, you know, mobility choice, they have been oftentimes ranked as one of the most satisfying places to be able to drive as a motor. So people who have to drive or really much prefer to drive, they're able to get around quite easily, relatively speaking, and they're there.
00:05:17:21 - 00:05:30:25
John Simmerman
I think Waze is the the organization that did the satisfaction in the Dutch turned out to be at the highest levels of satisfaction, but these still look like they're pretty satisfied to what's going on here.
00:05:30:27 - 00:05:53:24
Mike West
Yeah. So yeah, as I kind of was going along, obviously me going into a career as a city planner really started making me think things differently. I love cities all along, but understanding how everything works together in a city, you know? So a few years back, I think about six years ago now, I've moved to Databricks, the Mexican community in the southwest, Salt Lake County, just south of Salt Lake City.
00:05:53:27 - 00:06:13:20
Mike West
And that really changed a lot for me because also I live in this house, right? There's trails everywhere. There's I think there are 40, 50 miles of trails now and within daybreak. So that to me, that was just so much different. I can hop on my bike and I can ride over to the little shopping center now as a grocery store.
00:06:13:23 - 00:06:29:13
Mike West
And it was game changer. So and because of that, as you see in this picture here, I was actually able to convince my wife to get a cargo bike. At first, she's a little hesitant, like, well, I don't know, it's a lot of money. Then I had a good friend of mine. He said, Hey, borrow my car bike, see what everybody thinks.
00:06:29:13 - 00:06:48:07
Mike West
And as soon as she wrote it, she fell in love. So And the 2020 is the pandemic was coming on like, let's get this cargo bike. So we got this cargo bike here and it's so my son there on the right, he has special needs, but his favorite thing is just to ride in the cargo bike, as you can see on his face there, and just the joy it brings to him.
00:06:48:07 - 00:07:08:15
Mike West
And he was even in a car enthusiast with me for a little while because he likes what dad likes are getting in this bike just was such a different story for him. He felt like he could get out in the community. And so getting this bike was just game changer for our family and living in a community that actually made it possible to safely get out and enjoy riding.
00:07:08:15 - 00:07:18:00
Mike West
So I've learned a lot from living in daybreak and seeing a lot of lessons learned from that for other communities to emulate as well.
00:07:18:02 - 00:07:39:12
John Simmerman
You know what? Let's let's actually you know, you mentioned, you know, the city where you're working. You've also mentioned where you're living there in DAYBREAK. So let's pull pull up an overhead view of what we're talking about and where we're talking about since we are, you know, really broadcasting this out to an international audience. And so folks are joining from all over the place.
00:07:39:14 - 00:08:03:01
John Simmerman
So if we take a, you know, take a look at where we're talking about here, we've got DAYBREAK right here, sort of outlined. We can see towards the east where most of the development is happening. And that looks like we towards the west. We've got a bunch of undeveloped area. I know that there's like 1300 acres that are going to be developed in the near future.
00:08:03:03 - 00:08:23:05
John Simmerman
But then if we pull out, we can see down below where this star is, that's where you work there and it's City of Lehigh. And then if we really pull back a little bit, we can actually see sort of the the entire you know, area here. And then we see Salt Lake City right up there to the north.
00:08:23:05 - 00:08:47:01
John Simmerman
And so you're you know, you're pretty much down, you know, in the southern area of the Salt Lake City metro area. And for folks who might be familiar with BYU University in Provo, we've had we've featured some folks from Provo before. That's down to the south here and south and east a little bit. So, yeah, that's kind of the bearings as to where it's at.
00:08:47:03 - 00:08:54:00
John Simmerman
And that's what, 15, 16, 17 miles between the two Lehigh and DAYBREAK.
00:08:54:02 - 00:08:59:26
Mike West
Yeah, yeah, about 70 miles, I think between between the two, I guess is the. You travel?
00:08:59:29 - 00:09:14:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you mentioned city planning and so are you, you know, sort of a generalist. And in terms of the work that you're doing or use specifically looking at transportation planning.
00:09:14:10 - 00:09:37:04
Mike West
Yeah. So you know, I went to the University of Utah. I'm my urban planning degree. I started out kind of generalists, you know, here's the general things should be doing is city planner dealing with zoning, general planning principles, things like that. But I really did get into transportation, especially the last four or five years and really learning a lot about it, trying to create equitable transportation for everybody.
00:09:37:11 - 00:09:54:28
Mike West
Right now. So I've kind of, in my own way, taken my career to kind of specialize in transportation. I guess you could say. I'm not necessarily a degree in it, but I've learned a lot and I really try to push different transportation solutions now at work.
00:09:55:00 - 00:10:25:22
John Simmerman
Right? Okay. All right. Fantastic. And you had mentioned that, you know, being in daybreak and I'm going to just pull up a kind of the DAYBREAK Utah dot com website here. We it's it's definitely it's a it's a master planned community. It's a very large master planning community. It is a Peter Calthorpe designed community of originally. And I know that it's been going through different phases of developing as we saw from that overhead.
00:10:25:22 - 00:10:37:07
John Simmerman
We've got some of it to the east that's already built out and then much of it is is unbuilt at this point. How many years has it been in development and being built out?
00:10:37:09 - 00:11:00:27
Mike West
Yeah, I believe the first phases and again, I'm not the planner for daybreak, so don't hold me right. But I believe it started around 2003 2004 was construction. The planning work began before that, so they're about 20 years into it as far as construction goes. They got a they got a ways to go. Their original plan called out for 20,000 housing units, obviously, of all different types.
00:11:00:27 - 00:11:21:26
Mike West
So you got apartments and a lot of missing middle housing, which is really nice to see happening there. Of course, quite a bit of single family is a suburban community, but I don't like to pigeonhole and say things are either suburban or urban. There's a lot of ways that can take form, and I think that's what's so important about DAYBREAK compared to the typical suburban community you might see around here.
00:11:21:28 - 00:11:44:17
Mike West
And really what they're trying to get at right now is they're starting to develop what they call their downtown. So they have like the bees baseball team that's up and Salt Lake moving out to DAYBREAK. You know, there might be good or bad as part of that. There's been a lot of opinions on both sides here locally. But so they've got this baseball stadium and they got some mixed use development going around that.
00:11:44:17 - 00:11:52:15
Mike West
So they're really trying to create kind of a center, an urban center around the the tracks, line, tracks. Is there a light rail system that comes down, today.
00:11:52:15 - 00:11:59:07
John Simmerman
But let's see if we can get this on screen here. So whereabouts is the the tracks line?
00:11:59:10 - 00:12:10:16
Mike West
Yes, if you see here, in fact, you can see where it says DAYBREAK library on that bottom left hand corner. okay. So little blue icons right there. That's one of the track stations.
00:12:10:18 - 00:12:12:02
John Simmerman
fabulous.
00:12:12:04 - 00:12:21:15
Mike West
Fabulous. So there's two track stations now. There's that one and one to the north. And they're going to put a new one in in the middle, which would be kind of the heart of their downtown area where that baseball stadium would go.
00:12:21:21 - 00:12:52:06
John Simmerman
Right. Right. And what I what's really amazing to just kind of looking at this is there's there's a certain amount of water feature to it. You've got the water that's in here and to to your point with what you had said is that moving to debris, it kind of influenced you, you know, as a planner and also as a as somebody who is is passionate about this work, you know, so much so that you also, you know, got a cargo bike is, in fact, this network of trails that you had mentioned.
00:12:52:06 - 00:13:07:26
John Simmerman
And you can just see them popping out in green. So I obviously have the the bike network filter or layer filter turned on on Google Maps here so that green just pops right out of all the trails here in place.
00:13:07:28 - 00:13:30:00
Mike West
Yeah. And that's the thing that's so nice about what they've done here. So again, thinking to the Netherlands and what places like how to have tried to do this park like setting that you go along with it really creates an enjoyable environment. Yeah. So when you're taking your family, it's a very enjoyable place to be and ride around trees and greenery and buildings or fronting up to these spaces.
00:13:30:00 - 00:13:48:12
Mike West
So it's a lot more engaging, a lot more eyes on the street. So a lot of these elements come together to really create an environment that people want to get out. So you kind of enticing people to get out and walk and ride bikes at the beginning of my planning career, you know, I don't, you know, retired school and you think about it, yeah, fine.
00:13:48:12 - 00:14:14:21
Mike West
For bikes is good. Walkability is great. That's something that we tend to try and think about. But what it truly takes to get people to get out and ride bikes and walk bikes is so important. So and the way we kind of create this built environment is profound effects on people's decisions and behaviors. So when I first started planning, put little painted bike lanes on cross sections and think, Yeah, we're getting the bike network in.
00:14:14:21 - 00:14:27:22
Mike West
But when you realize what actually feels like to riding a bike lane next to high speed traffic doesn't really do much. But as you can see in the pictures here, like this bike rack at the grocery store, this is when it was a little bit busier, but I think I counted something like 25 bikes and scooters all there.
00:14:27:22 - 00:14:46:17
Mike West
So and unfortunately, a little less use in the wintertime. I think people are still trying to get used to the winter cycling thing. And to be fair, the paths daybreak until about last year weren't plowed. So it's a little difficult to get out. Bike, but you can see how many more people are embracing the cycling and walking the community.
00:14:46:17 - 00:15:07:28
Mike West
This is a bike parade that they did last year and the 4th of July, a lot more cargo bikes we're seeing around DAYBREAK. So to me, that's a sign of, you know, people are you know, it sounds expensive when you say, you know, get $5,000 for a cargo bike compared to a car, obviously, it's pretty cheap. But when people are doing an additional purpose purchase, that sounds like a lot of money.
00:15:08:01 - 00:15:26:27
Mike West
But when you start seeing those come out in the community, then, you know, you're you're doing something right. This picture here is just to show. And even if you go back to the Google Buy here, you can see these two people, you know, they look out of place on this road. So this is what we call strode. You know, strong Towns is going through this mix of the street and the road.
00:15:27:00 - 00:15:44:21
Mike West
Now, that to me is not a comfortable or an attractive place to ride a bike. So that's to be the one issue with DAYBREAK and honestly, with a lot of suburban areas around the United States is sometimes if there is a bike facility, looks like this just striping this really doesn't convince too many people to want to do it.
00:15:44:21 - 00:16:08:12
Mike West
So this is actually kind of not usual to see people, especially, you know, casual riders riding in a bike lane like that. So I snapped a picture real quick. But yeah, once you leave DAYBREAK, it's I've kind of thought of as a bit of an oasis for being able to walk and bike more safely, surrounded by a kind of more of this auto centric development pattern.
00:16:08:12 - 00:16:11:14
Mike West
So this is kind of what you see when you get outside, unfortunately.
00:16:11:14 - 00:16:25:01
John Simmerman
But yeah. Yeah. And as you mentioned, you're you're not working for that city. And that, you know, is daybreak a part of a municipal city? What city is it part of?
00:16:25:04 - 00:16:41:13
Mike West
Yeah. Yes. After in Utah. So daybreak is kind of the whole western half of the community and they have the eastern half. Traditionally, it was a bit more of a rural community. They have a lot of larger lots in the other parts of the city of yeah, I can remember seventies or eighties, it really started to develop more housing.
00:16:41:16 - 00:16:44:29
Mike West
I mean, really started growing quite a bit.
00:16:45:01 - 00:17:10:11
John Simmerman
So you had mentioned a little bit there about the influence too, and the comparison of DAYBREAK to, you know, some of the Dutch cities. You mentioned Halton, for instance, and I haven't been to Halton. I also would agree that, you know, it's it's like one of those places where and if we look at this overhead, you see like a similarity, you know?
00:17:10:11 - 00:17:53:05
John Simmerman
Yeah. It's like, I mean, seriously, you've got the you've got this water, you've got the pathways that are right along in through this green area. For those people who have not watched my, my Halton videos, I do encourage you to, to, to, you know, click on those. I have a couple different ones. I've I've ridden from Utrecht over to Halton and then through Halton, but I also have an interview with a local resident who lives in Halton went out of her way to move there because of the quality of life of being able to live in a city which was an intentionally planned city in the 1970s and started building in the 1980s, where most
00:17:53:05 - 00:18:15:29
John Simmerman
residents actually do own cars. But cars are not permitted to to drive through the center of the city. All of the parking is in in sort of the outskirts. And it's just really a wonderful approach towards creating a people centered design from a planning perspective.
00:18:16:02 - 00:18:33:22
Mike West
The one thing I love and I think we got a couple of images and videos here is the way they've done the traffic circulation plan, and that's one of the most important things, honestly, cities can get right. Getting protected bike lanes and all that stuff are obviously going to be a big part of the overall plan. But getting the roads right is one of the most important things you can do.
00:18:33:23 - 00:18:58:23
Mike West
So this image, this video here shows you that bike path is direct. So from these kind of suburban areas, a lot of more of your single family and townhome type development leads straight up into where that transit station and kind of what we would call here in the U.S. transit in development. So you got your shopping center and everything in the middle, so you make it very convenient and direct and enjoyable from the perspective of walking or biking.
00:18:58:25 - 00:19:24:24
Mike West
But then this image here shows your driving route. So instead of this direct straight ahead option for cycling, you have a bit more of a circuitous route. It's not to say you can't drive, you absolutely cannot. And they have some parking there that you can use. They really incentivize you to ride your bike or walk. But the difference here between where I live and daybreak, DAYBREAK, it's just as direct to drive most places as it is to ride.
00:19:24:27 - 00:19:40:18
Mike West
So when the convenience factor comes into play, a lot more people may say, well, I'll just take the car this time. Just can be a little quicker. Whether really is or not, people perceive it to be that way or the infrastructure is dangerous and people don't want to ride their bikes on sidewalks or those kind of bike lanes.
00:19:40:21 - 00:20:00:07
Mike West
Out here, you can see that getting to that city center, you don't have massive, big roadways either because so many more people are walking and biking to get there. Again, you can connect there and you can get there by car. It's a very free flow drive. So you're not like in congestion, Not that they don't have congestion in new directions in most places, but it's quite pleasant if you are going to drive.
00:20:00:09 - 00:20:23:11
Mike West
But it takes longer. So you're incentivized to get there faster on your bike, but you can get to the shopping center. There's a lot the traffic there is not like this huge thoroughfare of traffic movement, so it's very enjoyable place to be. So that's why it's so critical to get that circulation plan right for a lot of cities in Halton is just such a great example.
00:20:23:13 - 00:20:25:27
Mike West
So that actually is a good example because you.
00:20:25:27 - 00:20:27:07
John Simmerman
Have these videos here real quick.
00:20:27:07 - 00:20:54:12
Mike West
Yeah, yeah. You've got a whole family, you know, family friendly, all ages and abilities, paths throughout the community. So you get this type of environment and then if you go to the next video and you get the kids going to school, there, but because you have those kinds of situations, you've created your first of all, have smaller roads, that's a lot less infrastructure you have to build, which on the cost side of things is a lot better for a city financially.
00:20:54:14 - 00:21:12:00
Mike West
But also you have a lot more free flow of traffic situation. So when you do drive now this was at the tail end of the peak hour when we're doing this drive here and then this particular part of the ring road, it was flowing really nice, smooth.
00:21:12:02 - 00:21:34:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, it's it is very, very interesting when you when you take a look at, you know, that that Halton example because of course Halton was developed as being a community that could be a commuter community, a bedroom community for you tracked because of traffic was getting rather full and the cost of living in new tract was getting up there.
00:21:34:09 - 00:21:40:15
John Simmerman
And so even way back in the 1960s and 1970s, that was their vision for for Halton Yeah.
00:21:40:15 - 00:22:11:09
Mike West
And you see similar things happening in U.S. cities. You know, for the case of North Utah County, we have a city, Eagle Mountain in Saratoga Springs. It's a similar thing. People move out there because housing's a little cheaper. The difference here is how to has that direct transit line. You can take the freeway contract if you want. You have a direct transit line and they make as easy as possible to cycle there and park your bike and then take the train to work because it's a convenient option for people to use, then that takes a lot of burden off of your roadways and things like that.
00:22:11:12 - 00:22:15:12
Mike West
That's something that's not an option that wasn't designed in a lot of American communities.
00:22:15:18 - 00:22:16:28
John Simmerman
Yeah, you.
00:22:17:00 - 00:22:32:06
Mike West
Know, this shows that's me and my director. We came when we went to the Netherlands last year if we just wanted it. We've done a lot of research, watch a lot of videos, saw some of your videos. Obviously there's a lot of content out there that's great to look at, but we just got to get out there and.
00:22:32:08 - 00:22:33:04
John Simmerman
Just.
00:22:33:07 - 00:22:34:25
Mike West
See what it's all about. So yeah.
00:22:34:25 - 00:22:43:08
John Simmerman
Yeah, that's fantastic. So you had mentioned in reference the help in circulation. So that's this image here. I talk through this.
00:22:43:10 - 00:23:01:26
Mike West
Yeah, yeah. So that blue line is the transit line is very direct up into Utrecht, into the Central Station and the two dots there are the two locations where they have train stations in Halton. So the first ring to the north was the first ring built and then they expanded to the south, the second ring. But those yellow lines are kind of their distributor kind of road network.
00:23:01:28 - 00:23:21:23
Mike West
So that's so what they do is the center where you have your shopping areas and where people are coming and going to the train station. They've done it in such a way that they don't circulate the traffic through it, they circulate around it. So they keep that through traffic as far away from that as you can, and you put it towards the outside of the development and then towards the inside.
00:23:21:23 - 00:23:38:22
Mike West
You make it as easy as possible and pleasant for walking and biking. So that's why this traffic circulation is so important. So if you were to take a road right through the center of that, first of all, you have more congestion issues. It would be a place that's not quite as pleasant to go to or ride your bike to.
00:23:38:22 - 00:23:47:01
Mike West
So it really kind of works against a lot of the goals you may have as a city to having a good urban center.
00:23:47:03 - 00:24:11:01
John Simmerman
You know, one of the things I want to point out to and thank you very much for this overhead is the what you see here on the outskirts. So if you look to the north and you look over here, you know, to the east, you'll see all of this farmland. And that's part of the point, is that they have, you know, preserved so much of this rich farmland in this area.
00:24:11:03 - 00:24:51:05
John Simmerman
And and I absolutely love this area, too, because, A, when I visited Halton, I just jumped on my bike and rode from from Utrecht into Halton. And so you're able to pass through a whole bunch of farmland. And then as I rode through Halton and then went back out into the farmland, and then I looped back around and went back up to up to Utrecht and it was just, it was so wonderful to see that really good transect, you know, that dividing line of, you know, this is where the urban development is and then boom, we're going to keep this rural, we're going to keep this agricultural.
00:24:51:08 - 00:25:05:10
John Simmerman
And in in many cases, there was even, you know, cycle paths or, you know, very, very quiet country roads that you could ride on in in that environment. And it's just, you know, such a delightful thing to be able to do.
00:25:05:17 - 00:25:26:06
Mike West
Yeah. And I think that points to some of the tradeoffs we deal with with a lot of the planning of kind of our American communities is, you know, people have moved to the suburbs with the idea of a yard and having kind of this breathing room. But the tradeoff is, is you're kind of built over all of your land, so may have your own little yard, but then you have, you know, endless miles of development.
00:25:26:09 - 00:25:41:18
Mike West
But the way the places like how to do that, you have this access to get out of those areas. Yeah, they're more compact, but you have access to get out easily and have no respite, quiet, you know, get out and really enjoy getting out on your bike and getting out in the countryside.
00:25:41:21 - 00:25:57:18
John Simmerman
Yeah, well, let's pop back over here. We've got some more images. So we've got this image of you guys making your way down some stairs here with your overflights, the bikes, the. You get your rental bikes there.
00:25:57:20 - 00:26:16:17
Mike West
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I will give a shout out to Paul with the Dutch way. He was. He's been my mentor about especially with a lot of the way the Dutch plan and do engineering and everything. It's just been amazing to as much as I have learned from that I could never pay for. But he took us around for a week in the Netherlands.
00:26:16:17 - 00:26:31:07
Mike West
We, you know, I think recycled like 300 miles when we were there. And we you know, he used his car. We got to drive some of the roads. So you got to see from all perspectives and really understand how it all comes together in the big picture and even show us here's some of the greatest things that have been done.
00:26:31:07 - 00:26:49:19
Mike West
And here's some places where it's still not working well. So even, you know, things aren't perfect in the Netherlands. What I say is they're always, you know, they're, you know, 30, 40 years ahead of us, I guess with the at least for the cities that are trying to change, they've just been doing it longer. So it just gives us a lot of inspiration as to what we can do here.
00:26:49:22 - 00:27:06:03
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah, that's great. Yeah, definitely a big shout out to Paul with the Dutch way. And folks, if you're aren't already subscribed to his YouTube channel, make sure you do that as well. He's got some nice content out there and we've got a little bit of around that action what's going on with us.
00:27:06:06 - 00:27:33:17
Mike West
This is to show that not everything in the Netherlands is perfect or is what we'd like it to be because you got these big slick lanes on the roundabout. So this is in Brownsburg. So there's, you know, sometimes people, I guess, almost fantasize about how the Netherlands is perfect and it's not always perfect. So the caution to some people is like, there's some situations you don't want to emulate back at home, but there are new standards and a lot of stuff they do obviously are super awesome.
00:27:33:19 - 00:27:35:23
Mike West
I'd just like to point that out.
00:27:35:25 - 00:27:40:09
John Simmerman
This doesn't look like the Netherlands anymore.
00:27:40:12 - 00:27:57:07
Mike West
This is kind of a follow up to the Halton discussion because the driving situation is direct and you have this big wide road that is a little bit more hostile to you If you're out of a car, this is what you have to deal with to get to the major shopping center next to DAYBREAK. And traffic, it's backed up quite often.
00:27:57:07 - 00:28:09:18
Mike West
So now by making it easy to drive, or at least you think you're making it easy to drive, in the end of the day, you're going to make it worse. So that's why you really have to create those options. And think about for this.
00:28:09:20 - 00:28:10:21
John Simmerman
Yeah.
00:28:10:23 - 00:28:35:14
Mike West
And this is the other end of the spectrum. When you make it direct and easy to ride your bike or walk even when it's raining outside. Not to say everybody here is enjoying the rain, but because it's the easier options, you you do it and it makes the city a better place by not having, you know, 5 to 7 lanes of traffic coming right through the city center here, which, you know, they've done a lot of work with trying to restore the canals and things right there by the central station.
00:28:35:14 - 00:28:43:14
Mike West
So it's amazing to see where they have gone and now where they're changing things back to what they once were before.
00:28:43:16 - 00:29:07:13
John Simmerman
Yeah, I like this video, too, because it emphasizes the fact that, yes, as humans we don't melt or dissolve and rain. You just keep riding. And the other aspect of this is is right at the beginning of this video, you see that there's a motor vehicle there that's waiting to get through. And then you also see a delivery vehicle, you know, delivering some items.
00:29:07:13 - 00:29:21:08
John Simmerman
It's it's not like the Netherlands are anti car. Yeah, there are plenty of motor vehicles there. It's just that they have really strived to create an environment where there is a little bit more balance in terms of mobility modes.
00:29:21:10 - 00:29:39:19
Mike West
But I would say that they understand traffic management really well. So it's sometimes when you get thinking of traffic, engineering's like how many cars can get through here, How can we prove the level of service they think in terms of almost traffic management. So yes, some people are going to drive, but there's certain areas where we wanted to incentivize it for other purposes.
00:29:39:21 - 00:30:08:28
John Simmerman
Yeah, you know, it's a good point. And the crew organization is sort of their mobility organization that they have there. And there's many different Chrome manuals. The crew manual that is specifically for the Bicycle Network includes these five principles for successful bike network. Why don't you walk through these and talk about the relevance, you know, for you in the work that you're doing within your own city and within your own profession?
00:30:09:00 - 00:30:28:15
Mike West
Yeah. So since learning about this is actually DTV Consultants of the Netherlands there that prepared the last crew manual, but we took a training course as our city staff and then all the other planners here in Lehigh. We took a training course on these five principles. We want to really learn like how do you truly create a more successful bike network?
00:30:28:17 - 00:30:48:12
Mike West
And so we we've learned a lot. So I guess just to run through in real quick, you get cohesion. So that's the idea of cohesion as you can get from anywhere to everywhere by bike. So it really gets at a connected network and you have to have, you know, a dense enough spacing of your primary bike network to make it make sense.
00:30:48:15 - 00:31:09:04
Mike West
Then there's this idea of the directness principle. So that's really getting at convenience. So you want to in fact, they have even a ratio that they recommend, but you want to get there is direct is possible both on the network level, but even down on the street level, you know, even getting through intersections and things like that, safety, obviously, I think that makes a lot of sense to people.
00:31:09:04 - 00:31:29:13
Mike West
You want it to be safe. Both perceived and actual safety are important, and oftentimes that means putting your main bike route off of the main road. So as it's been coined before, the disentangling your modal networks, so you don't always want your main networks for your different modes on the same corridors, but also safety is, you know, you have a lot of traffic.
00:31:29:13 - 00:31:47:02
Mike West
Next, you're getting a lot of those exhaust fumes and stress and stuff like that going on. So that really disincentivizes people to want to go. Attractiveness can be subjective, but generally speaking, you know, if you're creating places with greenery, like in the picture, they're going through a tunnel with artwork on it. And so it doesn't feel like this dingy, dark place.
00:31:47:02 - 00:32:11:18
Mike West
It feels a little bit more enjoyable. So that can make it so people are they're enticed to ride their bikes and also the comfort principle really that's getting after you want smooth riding surfaces, you don't want weird, sharp angles, you want to be able to continuously cycle. So if you're having to stop all the time, that's going to really take a lot more exertion and really reduce the comfort of using facility.
00:32:11:18 - 00:32:28:27
Mike West
So you want cycling to be as continuous as possible, and that really ties into the whole comfort principle. So what we're trying to do is with these five principles, we're actually updating our bike pedestrian plan, trying to take it to the next level as much as we can, Just obviously working with buy in from all the other city staff and their elected officials.
00:32:28:29 - 00:32:48:10
Mike West
But we want to take these five principles and really bake it into the plan as best as we can and really allow that to guide the future of the plan and how we design it and where we put the network. So it's going to be in. We've already taken steps to do that. Some of the projects we've done in the past, but also really what we're looking to do, what we're proposing now and what we're looking to do in the future.
00:32:48:12 - 00:33:21:23
John Simmerman
Yeah, you know, in going back to this graphic here on Comfort, one of the things that I think about, too, is a linger on that I'm sorry is actually when you when we look at, you know, one of the things that they do very, very well, I think in the Netherlands is that recognizing that riding a bike is also a social activity, Oftentimes people are riding together, you know, maybe two friends riding together or a parent and a child riding together.
00:33:22:00 - 00:33:41:27
John Simmerman
And so part of the comfort thing is also making sure that the facilities are wide enough that two people can be riding side by side and still have enough room for somebody to be able to get around. And so I think that that's another part of that comfort thing. Yeah, that can bleed over into the safety as well as having a thing.
00:33:41:27 - 00:34:09:17
John Simmerman
But I think what's really, really important to acknowledge about these five, you know, key principles here is just how essential they are to actually getting a network designed. We're not talking about just one facility being safe and comfortable and attractive. We're we're looking at the fact that this is really honing in on what it means to create an entire network versus just a facility.
00:34:09:19 - 00:34:30:19
Mike West
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a great point, too. And when we're looking at our of bike lanes, if we can try and getting seven foot four width on a one way I think Chrome annual now calls for eight foot for a one way so you can comfortably cycle side by side and sometimes even allow passing. So all those all those features are certainly critical to get that right.
00:34:30:21 - 00:34:34:17
John Simmerman
And this is a video of Davis.
00:34:34:19 - 00:34:54:24
Mike West
Yeah. So I also went to Davis last year. Was it for regional council? It's one of our regional planning organization is here in Utah. They organized this trip and got with the city of Davis and some of their planners and said, Hey, you should come out to Davis, see how this kind of works in an American context and show that things are possible here in the United States as well.
00:34:54:24 - 00:35:10:10
Mike West
If you're doing a lot of these, really try to incorporate these principles. So they've done a great job of looking at directness and convenience and making comfortable paths. In this case, here you can see they even have bike roundabouts, which in some ways it's not always putting the necessary.
00:35:10:13 - 00:35:10:23
John Simmerman
You.
00:35:10:23 - 00:35:28:23
Mike West
Know, traffic management, I guess, but it's kind of fun to ride around. But even on some of their roads with maybe not quite as ideal bike lanes, they're just more of the painted ones. They still get a pretty good amount of use, but it shows what's possible, which I think is really important. Sometimes there's so many rationalizations out there why it won't work in your town, you know?
00:35:28:25 - 00:35:42:11
Mike West
it's nice here. We're not sure if we've got hills, but you can point to places all over the place that have the same issues and you can see it's successful when you really create the environment and the the network that really supports and encourages use.
00:35:42:18 - 00:35:55:06
John Simmerman
Yeah. And this, of course, is a video of approaching the the Delft train station. And yeah, this is just one of my favorite places in the world. Yeah.
00:35:55:08 - 00:36:16:24
Mike West
Yeah, I loved it. It really stood out to us again with the whole, you know, convenience and directness. You know, when you can combine transit and biking together, that back bike transit combo, it's just amazing how much use you can get. And that's what I love about that. Del Stations, you can just roll right in and park your bike, which we're trying to work with.
00:36:16:26 - 00:36:24:17
Mike West
The transit agency here, Utah Transit Authority, try to start thinking about how we do that kind of similar thing with a lot of our major rail stations.
00:36:24:20 - 00:36:40:10
John Simmerman
Right? So we know that the US Department of Transportation and the FDA that the Federal Highway Administration is trying they're trying to get stuff moving forward. Talk a little bit this in the benchmarking program.
00:36:40:13 - 00:37:05:11
Mike West
Yeah, so I've been looking at a lot of research both here at home, which sometimes is helpful when you're talking to engineers, others here, but also looking elsewhere. But yeah, what I really like to see is that W.A. is also looking over to the Netherlands and they took a trip over there with some of their staff, I think back to 2015, and they really wanted to see the way they do their bike infrastructure about their traffic management and the way that they approach safety.
00:37:05:11 - 00:37:30:13
Mike West
So since that trip I've been seeing a lot more guidance coming out from FH, especially with the adoption of the safe systems approach back in fall of 2022, We're starting to see a lot more guidance coming out. That really lenses just lends itself to what the Netherlands and the Dutch have been doing. Like they've now produced a guide on Turbo Roundabouts, which is kind of an invention of the Dutch for style roundabout.
00:37:30:16 - 00:37:49:03
Mike West
Now we're starting to see they have a bike guide and they're incorporating that. They have the five design principles they've added to which kind of build onto that. And they even have a speed management guide now too, which includes what safe speeds are for given the context and things like that. So I just think it's huge to show people here at home in the United States.
00:37:49:06 - 00:38:07:29
Mike West
I sometimes I'm looking out at the Netherlands a lot and I love a lot of what they do there. But when I bring it back home and say, hey, look, we should be doing this. Well, you know, our manuals say, you know, empty CDs says that doesn't work or whatever. So but to see the effort is taking steps and looking to the Netherlands for guidance, I think is huge.
00:38:08:02 - 00:38:16:17
John Simmerman
Yeah. So you just mentioned the safe systems approach. So we've got the FH, a graphic here for the safe systems approach.
00:38:16:19 - 00:38:46:03
Mike West
Yeah. So this is what W was adopted. It's safe systems approaches, just like the Dutch are doing sustainable safety version zero in Sweden, which is now being adopted in several cities and states in the United States. But the efforts way is now adopted it for the national transportation approach and really there's these six principles and five elements. And once you truly understand what all of these means, it it changes the paradigm in the way we structure our transportation system.
00:38:46:06 - 00:39:12:15
Mike West
And it's so important to get it right and understand what they mean. And this is actually something I'm really trying to advocate for, both as a personal advocating, but also as a professional. We have around the circle or the principles, things like humans make mistakes. So when you understand that humans make mistakes both on purpose or inadvertently, then that changes the way you design and approach your transportation network when you have things.
00:39:12:18 - 00:39:33:07
Mike West
The other principle on here, humans are vulnerable. So now again, I'm actually going to kind of do a hopefully a funny little video for my next YouTube video on this just kind of illustrates the vulnerabilities. You know, at a certain point, our bodies just can't take much more impact. When you're in a car, you're a little bit more protected so you can handle a little bit higher or harder hit from another vehicle.
00:39:33:09 - 00:39:53:22
Mike West
But when you're outside of a car, obviously you just don't have that protection. So understanding these vulnerabilities and the context around a road is so important to get it to get right and understand how to truly increase safety within our cities. Some of these are things, you know, death, serious injuries, unacceptable. Obviously, that's, you know, hopefully self explanatory.
00:39:53:22 - 00:40:17:07
Mike West
But there's some who maybe feel out there that, you know, maybe it's just a part of the way things are. But we have to ensure people can have mobility. But I don't believe it has to be that way. And that's what W is taking on. The approach is it is unacceptable. We can do better. We can just structure the system in a way to reduce and ultimately work towards a goal of zero fatalities.
00:40:17:10 - 00:40:38:21
Mike West
Redundancy is crucial and that's where the elements come into play in the middle. Safety's proactive, so we're not responding to issues, so we want to get ahead of it and that's what we'll get to a little bit later here on here, I've got several analysis I've done for my work here at the city and really trying to help others around the state and the region, hopefully other parts of the country.
00:40:38:21 - 00:41:02:03
Mike West
How to approach this systematic analysis of your transportation network. So it's really getting at understanding where the risk potential is and obviously prioritizing. You'll take time to update your system every time you rebuild a road or build a new road here on the bottom responsibility share. That's really important to understand as well, because a lot of people will just say, yeah, you got to follow the speed limit.
00:41:02:03 - 00:41:24:20
Mike West
You have to be responsible for. But then that kind of goes against humans making mistakes. So we have to understand humans makes humans make mistakes. So when you're looking at responsibility, shared FH delivery is actually come out and clarified what they mean behind that means those who structure the transportation system need to be held accountable, because when you blame the individual users, then there's no reason to update your system.
00:41:24:22 - 00:41:45:02
Mike West
Say, yeah, that person should have used a crosswalk to bad, you know, maybe everybody else needs to learn to use the crosswalk. But you don't understand now the way humans interact in their environment, environment. And again, humans make mistakes. So you have to anticipate that and structure the system in such a way that you're providing the right kind of forgiveness within your design.
00:41:45:04 - 00:41:59:05
Mike West
Now, obviously, if it's a highway, you have your high speed design forgiveness and then the slow speed forgiveness, which really we don't do very well in the general in general in the United States, really getting that right in a more complex situation.
00:41:59:07 - 00:42:30:01
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm glad you clarified, too, that they issued a clarification of what they meant by that, because unfortunately, way too many dots, you know, out there when they say response responsibility is shared, they lean into the victim blaming and really put way more quote unquote, responsibility on, you know, quote unquote, those those more vulnerable people out there in our roadways that aren't wearing jackets of automobiles and saying you need to, you know, look out.
00:42:30:01 - 00:43:11:28
John Simmerman
And it's like, yeah, well, you know, it's a very, very unbalanced amount of responsibility when you consider and causes the damage. So it's Yeah, but yeah. And emphasizing the fact that is so important for us to make sure that we get the system designed properly. And that's what's really encouraging about at the federal level being serious about taking a safer systems approach to it so that we can hopefully take be honest about looking at the strobes that we have created and the tolerances for high speed traffic in areas that should not be high speed.
00:43:12:00 - 00:43:22:17
John Simmerman
We need to be, you know, honest and transparent and really, you know, start to work to do better at that. So, yeah, yeah.
00:43:22:19 - 00:43:47:01
Mike West
So in when looking at the safe systems, there's the in the elements they're safe speeds. So that's what this chart and that other chart for from sustainable safety really get at. It's based on some of the research. This is if it was speed management guide for safe systems where this comes from they list different types of crashes and the safe speed is they're saying this these speeds are, you know, correspond to 10% risk of injury.
00:43:47:01 - 00:44:06:21
Mike West
So pedestrian at about 20 miles per hour, 10% risk for fatality. So there's even still some risk with that. That should be the target. So if you've got pedestrians or even cyclists crossing roadways, that should be your target speed. And we'll get to the analysis that we've done for Lehigh. A lot of most of the city doesn't meet that not just speed limit, but design wise.
00:44:06:24 - 00:44:27:04
Mike West
Right. But we've got to start somewhere. And the point is we have to benchmark and really work on improving and really looking to the areas of the highest risk potential. So if you've got a street that's let's say 25 miles per hour is kind of your if this percent, if it's percentile speed, that's kind of what we would consider the operating speed.
00:44:27:07 - 00:44:53:05
Mike West
But you have a strode with 45 mile per hour speed limit and cars going 50 on average basis. That one's going to have a whole lot more risk potential. So that should be the priority and treatments. And that's not to say you shouldn't work on the other ones, but it really when you do your systematic analysis, understanding what the safe speeds are, analyzing all your roads, the types of users, types of comfort points and that kind of establish what that's going to look like for your city.
00:44:53:07 - 00:45:22:11
John Simmerman
Yeah, and I'm really glad that you included this graph here too, because this really brings to light the the power of like when you look at the Dutch approach to, you know, their their residential streets and the FT struts and you realize, yeah, these are all 30 kilometers per hour zones where you have shared space there. And when you translate that to per hour, you're like, yeah, that's like 17 miles per hour.
00:45:22:14 - 00:45:48:27
John Simmerman
And it all starts to make sense that, yeah, if you're going to be mixing people in automobiles with people walking and people riding bikes, people in wheelchairs, if there is that unfortunate collision that takes place, that crash that takes place, you know, if you're traveling less than 20 miles per hour, the the great likelihood of surviving it and is going to be much greater there.
00:45:48:27 - 00:46:15:17
John Simmerman
And so speed is so incredibly important. But what I like to also emphasize to on this is that it's also the avoided, because once you go once you're going at these speeds, you're going closer to human speed. And we see that in some of our busy intersections in junctions with people on bikes and you realize, look at the hundreds and hundreds of interactions that are happening.
00:46:15:17 - 00:46:31:12
John Simmerman
And because they're all traveling, you know, at 15 miles per hour or less, typically it's like you can have all these little movements that happen and these are all collisions that never occur because the speeds are closer to a human speed.
00:46:31:15 - 00:46:49:01
Mike West
Yeah, and that's the whole point of the slow speed forgiveness. If you're going 20 miles per hour, oftentimes you can stop. You even hit somebody, which is critical, especially with like a somebody walking. No, it's always best to not hit somebody walking or biking. If you hit a car or your car going slow speed, you're going to probably okay for the most part.
00:46:49:04 - 00:47:12:17
John Simmerman
And what I love about that is that it also doesn't show up on any of these graphs because it's this collision that was completely avoided. So. Yeah, Yeah. All right. So moving on. We've we've got this little video here of and you just recently posted this because this car that you worked up a little bit.
00:47:12:19 - 00:47:27:11
Mike West
I call this my research I purposely drove through this traffic in my car just to show, you know, traffic is not as bad as it seems to be. But while I was doing I see cars driving in the bike lane, I was like, Come on, guys, what is this? This goes back to the whole idea of humans making mistakes.
00:47:27:18 - 00:47:44:03
Mike West
You know, this time on purpose. They're like, Well, my time's more important than yours, so I'm going to speed around you in the bike lane and get to where I'm going. But that's why it's so important to look at your design, especially on your, you know, main road networks. If it's anything beyond kind of residential streets, you probably have your bike lanes separated.
00:47:44:03 - 00:48:04:02
Mike West
So in this case, the curb should be right up to where the white stripe is in the bike lane on the backside next to the sidewalk. So if you had that design feature that now starts to restrict the types of mistakes people want to make. So now you're not driving in a space that's really intended for bikes. Obviously not too many people cycle there because it's not very comfortable place to be for.
00:48:04:02 - 00:48:17:24
John Simmerman
Yeah, Would you I mean, you know, I might, you know, as somebody being relatively confident and brave doing that, but I wouldn't recommend somebody who is interested yet concerned.
00:48:17:26 - 00:48:18:27
Mike West
Yeah definitely.
00:48:18:27 - 00:48:26:03
John Simmerman
Yeah. I mean now what's the speed limit on this on this particular road Strode goes Right. Yeah.
00:48:26:05 - 00:48:44:07
Mike West
It's trying to be a freeway but it's actually the front of roads of a future freeway system. Kind of like what Texas does anyway. But it's 40 miles per hour here. But it goes up to, I believe, 50 miles per hour afterwards. So having that kind of speed with a bike lane like that, basically when you get to that kind of speed, that bike lanes are clearer Yeah.
00:48:44:10 - 00:49:13:13
John Simmerman
Let's go, let's go. You said 40 miles per hour and you look at this and you're just like, Yeah, that's that's nuts. That's nuts. Yep. When we when we look at this type of situation, two in the Dutch have a pretty standard sort of approach at this when they when they look at a road like this, it's more than likely going to be a 50 kilometers per hour, you know, motor vehicle speed roadway.
00:49:13:15 - 00:49:48:22
John Simmerman
And they're sort of their dividing line of anything above, you know, basically above 30 kilometers per hour. You need protected and separated road infrastructure for people on bikes and people walking. And so this would definitely be to your point, it should be a yeah, have that curb right up to the edge here. And then, you know, you have a great separation and you have probably the people, you know, a facility, maybe it's a super, super wide multi-use path or maybe it's a separate pedestrian path next to a cycle path.
00:49:48:25 - 00:50:12:12
Mike West
So yeah, and I think there's a big there's kind of a distinction too, between a speed limit and what people actually drive. So even if you were to just set the speed limit on that road to 20 miles per hour, which obviously wouldn't fly, but if you were to set that for 20 miles per hour, you're not going to get people going 20 miles per hour because it feels like a freeway, basically, because it's got big wide lanes and shoulders and all that.
00:50:12:15 - 00:50:23:17
Mike West
So the design needs to support the speed limit. So you shouldn't have to have speed limit signs to make people understand how fast you should be generally going. So that's the part so far.
00:50:23:20 - 00:50:39:04
John Simmerman
Yeah. Well now we're getting into some of the analysis. So this is the analysis comparisons. Walk us through this series of images. I'm not sure if they're in order or not, but we'll slide through them in. Yeah, we'll be surprised by what comes up.
00:50:39:07 - 00:51:00:12
Mike West
Yeah, you know, all know that these are preliminary and this is what I've been working on for Lehigh. I honestly, I still need to know share a lot more with our staff and things here. So. But I like to get the idea out there for other people to considering there might be some refinement to this process of course, but get people thinking about what does it really take to do a systematic analysis of a city.
00:51:00:15 - 00:51:07:16
Mike West
So this image here, Victor, I think some of these have titles on the images I'm trying to remember. I should have the titles on the picture.
00:51:07:19 - 00:51:11:25
John Simmerman
yes. So this one is the excess management comparison.
00:51:11:28 - 00:51:33:17
Mike West
Okay. So in this image here, what this is showing is one thing that also is mentioned in the sustainable safety standards. It's not so much an F guidance is functionality of roads, and that's so important to get right. And there's going to be a couple elements of that that we need to look at. This is what I call kind of your straddle meter math maybe.
00:51:33:19 - 00:51:57:09
Mike West
So if the if the colors, there's kind of a baseline under there and then a smaller line with different colors in the middle. So the baseline establishes the functionality and the color line in the middle is how many accesses per mile there are. So it's showing, here's how much permeability you have on that road. So you have, you know, for example, kind of on the right hand side, there's a red line all the way up through there.
00:51:57:09 - 00:52:16:10
Mike West
So it serves a through function for roads. But you have a lot of the yellow and sometimes even a little bit of green colors. They have a lot of access. So that by definition is not a great stroll. That one is just a one lane in each direction stroke. But we have a that the access is incompatible with the function of the road.
00:52:16:10 - 00:52:34:06
Mike West
So sometimes when you're looking at the analysis, then you have to take a step back and think, all right, what what would we do moving forward here? And I say, I don't know the answer yet on this one. That's for our city staff to talk about that. Should this be a through function for road? Does it make sense for a through function here?
00:52:34:06 - 00:52:59:22
Mike West
If so, then let's look at the management of access is along this and really try and get a design that safe limit those conflict points. It also helps with the efficiency of the road because I would much rather have an efficient road with one lane each direction than a less efficient strode with two lanes in each direction. Now you have a whole host of safety issues and opportunity cost of use of space, because maybe you could have had a protected bike lane, but now instead you have of these vehicle lanes.
00:52:59:24 - 00:53:09:24
Mike West
So it's really important to look at functionality for that point of view, but really decide what should the function be here. Once you decide what the function should be, then you look at the design, the access, spacing, things like that.
00:53:09:24 - 00:53:12:01
John Simmerman
So got it.
00:53:12:03 - 00:53:33:27
Mike West
So this right here, it kind of looks at the context of the roadway. So when you have a through function of your road, just like how they took it around it, you don't want to put the third function right through the heart of your city because then you have this incompatible context with a through function. Then you're going to have all this access along your road, Craigslist conflict points.
00:53:33:27 - 00:53:53:01
Mike West
And it really just creates a lot of safety issues, too. So, for example, here, this this really kind of gets at the transects. So I try to map out the city in terms of, you know, land use transect. So I see greens kind of your natural areas, the purples kind of more of a city center. The peak is what they would call a general urban transect.
00:53:53:03 - 00:54:20:10
Mike West
So really looking at here's the transect is kind of your context and this map shows what your functionality of your roads are. So when you get to a red line going through pink or purple areas, then that's where you know there's going to be issues not just with livability and quality of life, because that's obviously something that I really want to improve for the city, but gets at safety too, because you have a, you know, like a urban center with a lot of land uses that's going to create a lot of demand for being able just to walk places.
00:54:20:10 - 00:54:41:18
Mike West
You can cross the street and you put a five lane road through the center of that because we know humans make mistakes. If can call it that. You know, obviously the term jaywalking is definitely made that try to be a thing. But we know people are going to want to cross this thing and if you're going to make someone go a half mile out of their way to cross the street, they're going to cross it in a different location that's not intended.
00:54:41:21 - 00:55:00:23
Mike West
So it creates huge safety issues. When you have this type of context around a through function of a road. So that's really what this is getting after. So that kind of back to that whole circulation plan issue, you have to look at the functionality of roads and where they're going relating to either the existing context or the future context of what you want a place to be.
00:55:00:26 - 00:55:21:24
Mike West
Yeah. So this so on this map, just showing whether the and this is just speed limit alone this or this doesn't address design. I've got different layers in my analysis on that but this just says does the speed limit the posted speed limit, meet the safe speed or not? So we have the the chart from way in the chart from sustainable safety and they tend to match up pretty well.
00:55:21:27 - 00:55:40:17
Mike West
So this kind of shows us where the the posted speeds match the the safe speed or not so obvious. You can tell we've got some work to do with the freeways. They have great separate interchanges and then the small little streets and some of our communities out west are the ones that tend to meet it.
00:55:40:19 - 00:55:42:19
John Simmerman
Interesting. Fascinating.
00:55:42:21 - 00:56:03:02
Mike West
And then this one here is just to map out just the number of lanes that the roads are. So you can see, you know, the yellow ones are kind of your three lanes, kind of looks at the functionality a little bit. But if you have multi lane road, so obviously that's going to create more issues for safety. So I'm going to just kind of gives you a general idea of what you're looking at.
00:56:03:02 - 00:56:19:18
Mike West
The city kind of around that north part of the city, you can see a lot more of those multi-lane roads. So there's going to be a lot more issues there. So that's where you have to take a step back again and look this the right type of road for the context. If this road makes sense to be here, then how do we overcome the safety concerns?
00:56:19:18 - 00:56:45:25
Mike West
You know, so build a grade separated bridge for trail for example. So that's going to be what you look at for for your type of roadways there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can see it pretty clearly in some of these. Okay. So one of the elements of, say, systems is all safe users. So if it has a trail or protected bike lane, I put a color and some of the colors or whether it's on half of the road or both sides of the road or if it's a small enough road, you know, a trail would say it's going to be okay.
00:56:45:28 - 00:57:04:04
Mike West
So this is just kind of looking at do we have all safe users all over the city for the, you know, this case, this is for bikes. So there are some areas of the city where you do have some facilities, but there's a lot a lot of parts of the city that don't which obviously which is part of that glass ceiling to our success in the amount of people cycling.
00:57:04:07 - 00:57:11:15
Mike West
If you don't have a safe place to ride, people just aren't going to want to do it. So this really kind of gets after a bit of that.
00:57:11:17 - 00:57:17:04
John Simmerman
In testing and walk us through the definition of each of the different colors.
00:57:17:06 - 00:57:25:28
Mike West
Yeah, so green just means yes, there's a it's a smaller two lane road. If you have a trail on one side of put it as green, obviously everybody can.
00:57:25:28 - 00:57:27:28
John Simmerman
See the bright green, not the dark green, right. Yeah.
00:57:28:05 - 00:57:51:02
Mike West
Yeah. The breaker in the dark green are just little local streets which can be shared. The bright green is when the. Yeah. There's a safe facility on there. It's a five lane road for example. And you have a trail on both sides. Then it's bright green. The yellow means that half of the road has a safe facility, but it's a big road, so you're not going to reasonably cross it, go down and cross it again to get to a destination on the same side.
00:57:51:04 - 00:58:03:28
Mike West
So that in those cases I'll note it is half. And then the orange lines mean only part of the segment has a piece of a trail, but then it just dead ends at a certain point. So you kind of see where that is a little bit there.
00:58:04:00 - 00:58:06:13
John Simmerman
And then the red is.
00:58:06:16 - 00:58:09:14
Mike West
That just means there's no facility on and segment.
00:58:09:17 - 00:58:20:14
John Simmerman
We've missed the mark. Interesting. Okay. So and then this one is the sidewalks analysis.
00:58:20:16 - 00:58:42:00
Mike West
Yeah, same thing for sidewalks. And again, green means it's on both sides. Orange means it's part yellow means half of it and red means no sidewalks. Now, some of them like there's that big red line across the top that's a major highway. Probably shouldn't have sidewalks anyway. So we're going to want to find a disentangled place to take people in that section, right?
00:58:42:00 - 00:58:49:23
John Simmerman
Right. Yeah. You know, get get people on a completely separated facility. And what's the population of Lehigh?
00:58:49:25 - 00:59:01:25
Mike West
Yeah, it's about I think we're in the low 80,000 range now. Okay. So it's anticipated a build out to be about 160,000 or so people. Okay. So but that could.
00:59:01:25 - 00:59:03:16
John Simmerman
Change.
00:59:03:19 - 00:59:26:21
Mike West
This map here, showing how far off the speed is. And again, it's just posted speed, not the operational speed. I'm still mapping some of that out. This is just showing. Here's the posted speed. How far off is it from the same speed? So this kind of gives you an idea of where your highest risk potential is that so when you're prioritizing improvements for safety, this is kind of what you're going to get at.
00:59:26:23 - 00:59:43:29
Mike West
So if it's, you know, a dark colored green on dark colored green, it's not as big of an issue. But like some of these, you have, you know, orange over green. So then your risk potential is getting higher. So it's almost a bit of a heat map to say, here's where your highest risk potential is based on the types of conflicts and the types of users.
00:59:43:29 - 00:59:49:19
John Simmerman
That are there. And here we've got the analysis. Speed off.
00:59:49:22 - 01:00:02:14
Mike West
Yeah. So this is just by itself. This is just showing how far off the speeds are similar to that other map, but it doesn't have it overlay. So kind of stand out a little bit more. And this one includes all of the local streets as well. So.
01:00:02:16 - 01:00:14:00
John Simmerman
Well, interesting. So on these these local streets when you starting speed is off, this means it's on these local streets. People really are going faster than they should be.
01:00:14:03 - 01:00:32:03
Mike West
Well, in per posted speed limit, a lot of our streets, the speed is actually pretty close to it. Okay. But it's looking at the safe speed. So the safe speed is 20 miles per hour in a residential street. Right. And the speed limit, 25. Sometimes the speeds get a little higher than that, even if it's along straight section.
01:00:32:06 - 01:00:53:11
Mike West
But but overall, we're, you know, five miles per hour more than what the safe speed is recommended. Now, in terms of risk potential, that's obviously a lot less risk potential compared to the strobe with, you know, 45 mile an hour speed. So right now, in the grand scheme of prioritization, that's going to obviously be a little bit lower than some of our more high speed tech roadways.
01:00:53:13 - 01:01:02:05
John Simmerman
In is 25 miles per hour, the sort of the default residential kind of speed on on these quiet little streets?
01:01:02:07 - 01:01:22:13
Mike West
Yes. Yeah, that's pretty common, at least here in Utah, suing other places in the United States as well. Salt Lake City reduced their default speed to 20 miles per hour. So that definitely sets a good precedence for the rest of us. I'd like to get to that at some point. Obviously, lowering the speed limit would be great. Now forcing it's going to be a little different.
01:01:22:13 - 01:01:23:28
Mike West
So that's going to you're going to have to.
01:01:24:01 - 01:01:52:17
John Simmerman
I mean, and that's where you start to look at, okay, what can we do from a design perspective of, you know, of being able to bring those speeds down? But, you know, taking that step, you know, that acknowledgment of if it's 25 miles per hour in these areas, and especially if we also see that it's an area where there aren't a lot of sidewalks provided or there's no bike lanes provided on these streets, they're de facto shared streets.
01:01:52:19 - 01:02:20:10
John Simmerman
And so having that baseline speed limit set at 25 and then if it feels safe to drive faster than that, the drivers will drive faster than that. And then we just see that exponential increase in the potential for serious injury and fatality rates going up. And so, you know, I applaud those cities that are taking the move to bring that, you know, that baseline speed down to miles per hour.
01:02:20:13 - 01:02:30:08
John Simmerman
Then let's get working on the traffic calming and, you know, traffic diversion and those types of things to be able to encourage and support the slower speeds.
01:02:30:10 - 01:02:52:20
Mike West
Yeah, absolutely. And in some cases, it goes beyond speeds. Now, this is just looking at safe speeds, safe systems approach, obviously, goals for a city beyond safety, but safety should, in my opinion, be a baseline. But I'll say there's use of space. You know, if you have local streets, you know, even if your speeds are managed, but they're wide and the driver feels entitled to the space, you know, get out of my way.
01:02:52:20 - 01:02:58:21
Mike West
You know, it's just kind of more of the use of space, you know. So there's some different elements like that you can get into as well with the design, of course.
01:02:58:21 - 01:03:20:16
John Simmerman
But yeah, yeah, yeah. So earlier I had mentioned a little bit about, you know, the interested yet concerned. This is a similar type of, you know, graphic that you know, really, you know, makes that differentiation that not everybody's comfortable riding in an unprotected bike lane. Talk about the of this in the work that you're doing.
01:03:20:18 - 01:03:53:14
Mike West
Yeah so what we're really trying to target is you know when we're you know, building out our bike industry network, we really want to target those interested in concerned folks because that's where you're going to see most of your success. That's where the greatest majority of people fall into this category. So if you plan just for the highly confident, you know, your success is going to be pretty limited and your goals of, you know, reducing traffic, air quality, you know, traffic congestion, all that kind of stuff, you're not going to see much success in any of those if you're just going on that.
01:03:53:16 - 01:04:10:13
Mike West
Now by focusing on interested in concerned, you're not precluding or not allowing highly confident people to use it as well. And that's what's so important to get right in your design is making it work for all of this. But you generally design for the interested and concerned. You can.
01:04:10:16 - 01:04:11:02
John Simmerman
Make it work.
01:04:11:02 - 01:04:12:27
Mike West
For everybody.
01:04:12:29 - 01:04:43:25
John Simmerman
Yeah, it's really important to you know, acknowledge the fact that, you know, for those who are highly confident, you know even like expert and yet vocal riders. Yeah we get that this you know separated pathway may not be you know something that you feel is is you know for you or necessarily something need we got it it's we're not building this for you we know that you're confident riding on the road go for it so.
01:04:44:00 - 01:04:58:15
Mike West
Well and sometimes when maybe as an example looking at the design of a path, for example. So if you're a confident rider, you're going to get going fast. But oftentimes you'll see in the US, you know, you have a trail, but you have a lot of those eight ramps jumping up and down. You have to go down street level.
01:04:58:15 - 01:05:21:05
Mike West
So you have that causes you to slow down. It kind of affects that whole comfort principle. So even when there is a trail, sometimes, you know, you'll see the confident riders in the road. But if you both address the safety and the comfort issue by doing, you know, the continuous dog crossing or the bike path just goes across and cars bump up and over, then you also make it more comfortable for those riders to use it, you know, using the ramps all the time.
01:05:21:05 - 01:05:40:19
Mike West
And especially if you separate pedestrians out onto a separate sidewalk in those busy areas, then you can really start to accommodate all users. And instead of putting investment in space out into the street, your street narrows, which again, slow speeds makes the street safer and crossing it. But then you also have a better and more usable bike path and pedestrian experience over there.
01:05:40:21 - 01:05:50:18
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. That's a good good point. I'm glad you clarified that as well. So we've got a variety of and this is kind of an example like we were talking about earlier.
01:05:50:21 - 01:06:11:04
Mike West
Yeah. So the crossings here are continuous and this is an example of slow speed forgiveness, right? The driver didn't see you going. I honestly didn't see the driver first until the last second when he because he kind of cut over and didn't use a signal at the last second. It seemed like it just came out. But he was able to stop pretty quick before he got up there because the design forced him to slow down before he went up and over.
01:06:11:04 - 01:06:40:00
John Simmerman
That is exactly what I was talking about earlier of you have the slower speeds, the lower speeds of the motor vehicle and you, you know, end up having an interaction which is a nonevent. In other words, it was a near miss, but it was not a collision. And, you know, it's like one of those self-reinforcing things. The more that we can encourage, the slower speeds and, you know, we can actually have these.
01:06:40:00 - 01:06:56:14
John Simmerman
And actually every time that one of these kinds of happen, you know, it's a self-reinforcing learning process as well, because I'm sure the next time that person's driving and comes to this very same thing, they're going to be like, yeah, the last time I was there, Mike was there. I wonder if Mike's going to be here again.
01:06:56:16 - 01:06:57:01
Mike West
We hope that.
01:06:57:01 - 01:07:10:16
John Simmerman
Mike Come on, that Mike guy. So on this one here, we've we're taking a look at the planned Thanksgiving urban planning. Walk us through what's going on here.
01:07:10:19 - 01:07:27:29
Mike West
Yes, this is kind of getting at land use. So when you're creating a successful bike network and getting more people out walking, you have to really look at land use, which obviously there's a lot of information out there about suburban sprawl and how that really kind of requires people to drive. So we're really trying to look at land use as well here in Lehigh.
01:07:27:29 - 01:07:48:28
Mike West
So this is an example of a new urban center. It's not perfect, but I think it's come along pretty well considering we've got instead of a parking lot of the transit station, you can come off and there's a plaza and there's buildings, retail space and a direct bike path that can see this. What we really want to try and look at is bringing destinations closer to people, because then again, it's the whole convenience factor.
01:07:48:28 - 01:08:07:18
Mike West
If You can hop on your bike and it's, you know, a mile away to get to a place like this, to get to the grocery store, restaurants or even work, then you're a lot more likely to utilize that mode of transportation. And every little step you mix in that with both the land use and the cycle network means that's one step less of, you know, this runaway sprawl.
01:08:07:18 - 01:08:10:24
Mike West
That's that tends to happen a lot of American cities.
01:08:10:26 - 01:08:27:18
John Simmerman
Yeah, I see some really interesting stuff here. We've got up here to the top. We've got a future transit oriented development there. We've got the front runner station again, Is this one of the rail lines with the station or is that a bus?
01:08:27:20 - 01:08:34:28
Mike West
No, this is a commuter rail. So this connects all the way to the north, to Ogden and down to Provo and all points in between them.
01:08:35:01 - 01:08:49:14
John Simmerman
And then we also see over to the far upper right hand side, we've got the interstate 15. So we also see that this is sort of sandwiched in between that rail line. And then the interstate highway is, you know, kind of cutting through here.
01:08:49:16 - 01:09:12:24
Mike West
Yeah. Yeah. And a big piece of the design that we worked with the landowners on the thing here is really focusing on directing people over to that rail station, obviously the freeways there, and that will provide more vehicular access, but really focusing on that, that rail station and the active transportation network, this can be developed around this. Now, the challenge here is we do have a five lane existing strode here, which may evolve hopefully over time to something that's a little slower.
01:09:12:24 - 01:09:39:15
John Simmerman
And Yeah, yeah. And those are those are obviously very, very challenging. You know, just up the road from you obviously in Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City is notorious for incredibly wide rights of way which date back, you know, to the original planning of of the city itself. But yeah, I mean, dealing with those incredibly wide rights of way that you have there and then trying to re-imagine them in a creative way.
01:09:39:15 - 01:09:57:15
John Simmerman
So I always like to say, you know, when we do have these, you know, massive strobes, I mean, yes, there are problems to be dealt with, but in some ways it's a blessing to have that real estate because then you can, you know, with the political will to make some changes, you can reimagine what that looks like.
01:09:57:18 - 01:10:03:26
Mike West
Yeah, absolutely. And that's where I would love to see, like, you know, cool single in Rotterdam and the way they reinvent reimagine that.
01:10:04:01 - 01:10:12:18
John Simmerman
Yeah. And speaking of like reimagining how again, when you have the rights of way, you can get some creativity and do some stuff like this.
01:10:12:20 - 01:10:33:25
Mike West
Yeah yeah. So this here is an example of kind of a road design. We've been working on. And again, I'll say from the advocate point of view, a planner working within a city, you know, obviously if I'm advocating effects to my director that has this kind of analogy, but it's like sometimes when you're working with people, if you just yell out in and calm down, whatever, you know, they just shut down, they're not going to listen to you.
01:10:33:25 - 01:10:50:19
Mike West
So people that I work with, they're good people. They want to do the right thing. Have they learned a lot of this stuff that I have? Maybe not, but we kind of have to share and help them along the way and see, you know, if this is something they can get on board with. So so it's kind of like the analogy is it's like taffy.
01:10:50:22 - 01:11:11:22
Mike West
You have to kind of slowly stretch it out and then they'll get going. But once you get going, you can pretty quickly, you know, stay intact that you try to do it real quick. Sometimes you just break it and then things shut down. So this is an example of a roadway by going through this process and in talking with other staff and with the developer of this, this is part of a transit oriented area on the north end of our town.
01:11:12:00 - 01:11:30:11
Mike West
Now we've got a roadway just one lane each direction in hindsight, should have been a maybe one way bike lane on both sides of the road. But we we have a two way bike cycle track on the one side try to get rid of Ashnault on it, but it's going to end up being black. But at a keep trying but so we have this design.
01:11:30:11 - 01:11:50:12
Mike West
So instead of doing a typical, you know, they got 50 feet of asphalt things just stripe it all. Now we've got you know, safe places for cyclists to cross the street to get into the cycle track area. Got some on street parking and you've just given the cars essentially the space they need to operate within the roadway. In other places, we have continuous type crossings that are going to be on the bike path.
01:11:50:12 - 01:12:02:02
Mike West
And you can see on the other side the sidewalk doesn't cross down the street level kind of ramps to the sidewalk over there, too. And we have added pedestrian crossing here as well. So it's not just bikes that can cross the street.
01:12:02:02 - 01:12:12:28
John Simmerman
Okay. So yeah, that's yeah, I was going to ask about that. It looks like it looks like it's only a crossing for bikes on on the left hand side but Yeah. So you it is going to be for both.
01:12:12:29 - 01:12:32:26
Mike West
Yep. Yep. There will be a separate crosswalk there that also goes through that median. So you have that refuge, you have just one lane to cross in each direction. So this is where the roadway design is so critical to get right, because if you design the road in a five lane, just big swath of asphalt, then it's going to be super difficult to cross this and get over to a transit station is where the future of commercial area.
01:12:32:29 - 01:12:55:04
Mike West
But creating roads that calm the cars down, just give them the space that's necessary and you give opportunities to take the street crossing and two stages to see that, you know, everybody else kind of bought into the concept and we're trying it out. So that's kind of the thing is sometimes you have to get what you can on the ground and let people react to it, see what can you learn from it.
01:12:55:07 - 01:13:15:22
Mike West
They like it. Obviously, they're going to be a lot more open to doing things in other places, the city. So it's really, really important to get whether, you know, especially for me working for a city, for even for advocates, if you can just get something on the ground, this is a kind of a permanent design. So it was really exciting to see them agree and go forward with this type of a design.
01:13:15:25 - 01:13:25:06
Mike West
But in other parts of town, in fact, that's one of our other images. We've got more of a paint reflector post type separated cycle track, but it's kind of a proof of concept type of issue.
01:13:25:06 - 01:13:45:01
John Simmerman
So yeah, we'll take it. We'll take a look at that. And in just a moment, since this is more of a permanent design, a couple of quick questions on this. Did you say that this where the crossing is here is that the bikes some kids will go down to the road level or were this be a continuous elevated platform here?
01:13:45:03 - 01:13:52:29
Mike West
Yeah. So that's part of kind of the negotiations we go through. So we didn't get the race crossing that we would hope for. So you do have to come to a road level.
01:13:53:06 - 01:14:01:05
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And hence it looks like prioritization is given to the motor vehicles given the direction of the sharp teeth here.
01:14:01:08 - 01:14:13:04
Mike West
Yeah. And, but that to me is a lot easier to come back and change in the future than the entire roadway. So sometimes you have to take what you can get and get it on the ground and then you know, you can improve things in the future as well.
01:14:13:11 - 01:14:17:16
John Simmerman
What's the motor vehicle traveling with here?
01:14:17:19 - 01:14:24:16
Mike West
So these ones and that's again approximate that we're working on. But yeah, these are, I believe, 11 foot lanes on this one.
01:14:24:20 - 01:14:37:09
John Simmerman
Okay. So they're not they're not massively wide. I mean, you know, it's not like the 12 to 14 foot lead. So hopefully encouraging a slower speed. And what's the what's the speed limit on this on this road?
01:14:37:11 - 01:14:41:14
Mike West
So it's not built yet. So it hasn't been established, but I would imagine in 25.
01:14:41:14 - 01:15:02:08
John Simmerman
Well, that's an interesting thing. The way that you phrased that. What is your desired, you know, speed, you know, for for this, given the context that it's in, is this you know, hopefully you're going to be in this is one of the things I push back on with with transportation and planners and it not is don't don't say, we haven't done the measurements yet.
01:15:02:14 - 01:15:10:02
John Simmerman
No, no, no, no. What do you want the speed to be given the context and the fact that you're going to have people crossing here.
01:15:10:05 - 01:15:14:04
Mike West
Yeah. This is where after clarify, I'm giving my opinions and I know I.
01:15:14:06 - 01:15:19:21
John Simmerman
Know exactly as I say this. I'm not speaking on behalf of my employer.
01:15:19:24 - 01:15:20:06
Mike West
Yeah.
01:15:20:08 - 01:15:21:24
John Simmerman
But, you.
01:15:21:27 - 01:15:43:04
Mike West
Know, I think it needs to be 24 given the context and safe systems approach, because we've a crossing point here and not just here. You may have people crossing the roadway without a crosswalk just in the median at other locations. So we need to make sure that if someone runs out in front of a car or something, you know, the speed is such that it's going to be a lot safer and the person most likely going to be okay.
01:15:43:04 - 01:15:50:19
John Simmerman
So what's the land use context around here? Is this like a park area or are there a lot of things happening?
01:15:50:25 - 01:16:07:06
Mike West
Yes, it's developing. There's some existing kind of single family homes to the east of this. The right hand side of the image, there's a new apartment, a townhome complex going right to the right there. So you got the 400 housing units right there on the left hand side. There would be a future commercial or mixed use type development.
01:16:07:06 - 01:16:25:15
Mike West
And then the future, what they've now said, which should be a light rail station, and then a lot more land use further west of the rail station down there with mixed use development. So definitely that more urban type of a context. So that's why I do think especially in that case. Yeah.
01:16:25:18 - 01:16:27:22
John Simmerman
And what's the name of this would be.
01:16:27:24 - 01:16:38:11
Mike West
Well well so the the development's called this is at the point I don't know if there's much out there at the moment other than what's on our files but but yeah, they call it the vistas very.
01:16:38:11 - 01:16:48:05
John Simmerman
Very interesting. So we've got some other interesting sort of land use things here that we're going to take a look at. We've got this particular development, the SALT Development plan.
01:16:48:08 - 01:17:13:17
Mike West
And a lot of these are just some examples we just want to show like there was a Thanksgiving point example that, you know, that's going to be a larger urban center. But throughout the town and this is kind of been working with our council, but they've in our last master plan update, they've now identified these transit oriented development areas, but not just for the sake of supporting transit, obviously want to see that, but we want to see land use centers that provide destinations close to where people live.
01:17:13:18 - 01:17:29:08
Mike West
Even if you live in a single family home, you can have closer access to a place like this to walk or bike to, but obviously increase in the quality of life and being able to enjoy the city. And these are examples of putting new housing in our downtown. That last image was mixed use development on our main street.
01:17:29:09 - 01:17:52:18
Mike West
So you've got retail office and housing all within that same building. So we're taking steps with the land use plan as well and trying to really create destinations closer to where people are and trying to create places that have vibrancy and a sense of place for people and gathering areas for the community. So a lot of that's really important to having a happy, healthy community.
01:17:52:21 - 01:18:15:29
John Simmerman
And and those images are really rich in, you know, it a smile to my face. And I know that as you're mentioning it, a lot of it is just still kind of like not quite there yet. But you're you have these visions. You have to enhance planning. You're working on the planning. And so, yeah, here's like an image of, of, you know, kind of the situation that's out there now.
01:18:16:01 - 01:18:31:25
Mike West
So this is another thing. Again, it wasn't standardized or anything like that, but we're working with our other staff and the picture is kind of ugly because it's snowing and there's big, ugly power lines there. But this is one of the main church use paths on the west side of our town. And this is a roadway, one lane.
01:18:31:25 - 01:18:52:29
Mike West
Each direction has buffered bike lanes. I wish we would have kind of separated behind the curve from start. But but crossing this roadway, what we've done here is eliminated left turn movements from the streets on either side of it. So you're reducing the complexity a little bit so that there's fewer conflict points if people are crossing the path here, but also makes it very direct.
01:18:52:29 - 01:19:08:29
Mike West
If you want to go say there's a big, huge park just behind the picture here, so I'm going to get to that part. It's now more direct to use this path than it is to drive because you have to kind of go back in around because of the limitation there. And this is just the street or up the trail, I should say, up from that last image.
01:19:08:29 - 01:19:29:04
Mike West
We've been working with the developers of the area to front housing towards this. It's kind of a power corridor, but it'll be kind of a park greenway going along this. So really trying to get eyes on the trail to create a more engaging space. But one thing we've done here as well, we actually have street connectivity standards for our city that we don't want cul de sacs everywhere.
01:19:29:04 - 01:19:54:24
Mike West
We want a more connected network of streets for walkability. But we want to look at defining even further kind of at the whole how to an example and in a lot of cases make it just as or more connected for cycling and walking and maybe a little less connected in some cases locally for cars. So for these shorter trips, you're really incentivizing, using the trails and other things, but doesn't preclude obviously, the option of being able to drive somewhere.
01:19:54:27 - 01:20:05:09
Mike West
But in this example, there should have been a street here, but we had changed things in our code to say, look, that's a kind of a main trail route, punch the trail through and let's maybe not take the street through it.
01:20:05:09 - 01:20:26:29
John Simmerman
So and I really think that this is actually, you know, an example of getting the best of both worlds because there is still an affinity towards a housing development, you know, a cul de sac sort of development and not having, you know, feeling like you've got or, you know, a cars constantly going, you know, through your neighborhood right outside your front door.
01:20:27:06 - 01:20:46:26
John Simmerman
So, I mean, cul de sacs are actually very, very desirable for many, many homebuyers. But what I love is when you can penetrate those cul de sacs with walking and biking pathways that then connect to a trail network like this. Then you start to realize, we can really have kind of the best of both worlds on that.
01:20:46:28 - 01:21:22:06
John Simmerman
And as long as there's, you know, richness in terms of land use and you've got mixed use development and meaningful destinations within close proximity, you can really start to see a community, you know, being able to kind of fire on all cylinders, to use a terrible car enthusiast, you know, terminology. You know what I mean is, is like you're you're able to, you know, really lean into this off street network of pathways and connecting people to meaningful destinations, including their homes.
01:21:22:08 - 01:21:39:10
Mike West
Yeah. And I love idea of people want a cul de sac because there's low traffic and what is traffic doing for people? It's a safety issue. It's a noise issue. It's not the typical cul de sac, but now you have to get and use these arterial roads for all of your travel. But it's kind of taking that whole benefit of what people like.
01:21:39:10 - 01:21:53:01
Mike West
But combining it with just everything you just said, connected activity to trails like this land uses all that kind of stuff. Now you're kind of and that's really kind of part of the Dutch approach to to doing planning. Yeah. Is combining those those two principles very.
01:21:53:04 - 01:22:17:14
John Simmerman
Well and that's a big part of Oulu Finland as well is it's a very suburban context but they have an entire network of bike and pedestrian pathways which, you know, enables and allows for an extraordinary, you know, modal share of of kids getting the school, you know, somewhere in upwards of 60 70% of the kids are are getting the school by biking even in the dead of winter.
01:22:17:16 - 01:22:32:15
Mike West
Yeah it's awesome and I'll say a lot of what I present here as well is of a suburban context. Obviously there's a lot you can do urban, but I think there's a lot you can even do in the suburbs like this that can really increase quality of life and promote active mobility.
01:22:32:21 - 01:23:05:22
John Simmerman
Yeah, I agree. And what's really nice, you know, you know, from my perspective is when you are in communities like DAYBREAK and also Lehigh that are continuing to grow and continuing to attract people moving into into the area, if you can then work with those to have these plans in place in thinking about active mobility connectivity and leaning into the network of off street network of of active mobility pathways, it just really opens things up.
01:23:05:22 - 01:23:32:12
John Simmerman
And I think in the case of DAYBREAK, you really notice when you see maybe the same thing here in Lehigh, you really see that it is attached to a perceived quality of life enhancement. People really are attracted to it and think, my gosh, this is so great. I you know, I can park the car and I don't have to get back into it, you know, until I need to do that trip, which is going to be a car dependent type of trip.
01:23:32:14 - 01:23:37:10
John Simmerman
Everything else I can do by jumping on the bike and, you know, getting around town.
01:23:37:16 - 01:23:55:28
Mike West
Yeah, absolutely. And it's been cool to see the progression in Lehigh because now that the the city takes on many forms cause it's pretty big geographically. So like that area was kind of a master planned community, but you have other areas that are kind of older development areas, but it is cool to see the progression over time and, and how many more people are starting to get out and do that.
01:23:56:00 - 01:24:14:09
Mike West
Now that's a good segway to this right here. So shows where kind of trail network is at so our off street kind of network I really can't get you know thinking of the cohesion principle you can't get from anywhere to everywhere comfortably on a bike and a lot of these do cross major roads x rayed. Some of them do have quite a bit of great separation as well.
01:24:14:10 - 01:24:44:01
John Simmerman
Can I say one thing, though, is I don't think that I don't think we have to like assume that you can't get anywhere because, yeah, these are this is the network of of pathways And yes, it's not complete cohesive network. However, if you happen to be living, you know, like say you know right here in the middle, you know, and you know, and you need to be able to get to, you know, that trail network.
01:24:44:04 - 01:25:26:10
John Simmerman
But you happen to be living on a quiet residential street that that's easy to bike on and you know, ultimately doesn't have a lot of flow through traffic, etc., cut through traffic. It can be quite comfortable. So one of the things that I always try to lean into in try to encourage people to think about when they see bicycle networks and pathway networks is is also what where there there is comfortable streets that you can where there's virtually no infrastructure per se but is is very because as you know because you've been to the Netherlands 60 to 70% of the entire Dutch network is shared space.
01:25:26:13 - 01:25:46:20
John Simmerman
Yeah. And so that brings us that brings us right back to what are our shared streets situation. So those are residential streets. Have we been able to bring that motor vehicle speed down to closer to 20 miles per hour and then magically you just open up all sorts of cohesiveness and connectivity to an entire.
01:25:46:23 - 01:26:03:19
Mike West
Yeah, absolutely. And that was one of the reasons we were pushing for connectivity standards in the first place as well. So you can have a lot of times you're forced to have to go out to a major roadways. And there are some areas of Lehigh that are that way too. Yeah. Where you can get places without ever having to deal with that, then that definitely changes.
01:26:03:26 - 01:26:15:23
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you. Okay. And then, you know, and that's kind of I think that's one of the comments that you have on this is looks like more like a roadway network or is this. Yeah, Yeah.
01:26:15:26 - 01:26:32:15
Mike West
It's just kind of show, you know, the difference of where the networks are at. But I totally agree on the local street network. That definitely is a huge part of the active transportation network. Yeah I like to show here's our primary networks. You know this is the last was our primary kind of off street bike network. This is the primary card network.
01:26:32:17 - 01:26:51:15
Mike West
You can obviously see how well the car network is connected this point compared to the bike network. So it kind of just shows us, you know, why there's, you know, limitations on the number of people who choose to use bikes, because some people who are comfortable they they will get out on the residential streets and. Right. But even then, I've seen some people uncomfortable to ride in the street.
01:26:51:15 - 01:27:09:04
Mike West
They'll go on the sidewalk, even on a residential street. So there's a lot of perception, I think, that people feel like they just want to get on a trail on their bike. So I do think there's a lot of outreach that needs to be done. Like, Hey, look, these are all these are the routes that we can do or have something that we can build into the plan.
01:27:09:07 - 01:27:35:10
John Simmerman
And, you know, it'll state the obvious here. Is that also on, you know, the slower streets, those residential streets, basically cars are allowed pretty much everywhere. And so even though it's not highlighted in on on on screen here, yeah, pretty much all of those little tiny little squiggly streets. They're pretty much cars are allowed everywhere where you see one of, those little lines.
01:27:35:13 - 01:27:37:05
Mike West
Yeah. If Yeah.
01:27:37:07 - 01:27:50:17
John Simmerman
Anyway, what about. Interesting. Okay, Mike, we need to wrap this up, but we have some really cool sketch up models, videos, video clips. So I'm going to press play and let you talk through these.
01:27:50:20 - 01:28:07:04
Mike West
Yeah. So I love to use modeling to kind of visualize what things could be. So that kind of shows you take your typical street design, you see with high speed forgiveness here in the United States and do something with a little bit more of slow speed forgiveness and kind of still have all the same elements within the street design.
01:28:07:07 - 01:28:23:24
Mike West
It's not to say this is, you know, one size fits all design. Every road and streets can be different. But in this particular case, you know, there's no on street parking a bike lane, sidewalks and a travel in each direction. So this just shows how there's that paradigm shift from the way we do things now over towards the six systems.
01:28:23:24 - 01:28:40:16
Mike West
So you can see how you can separate people. It's actually less infrastructure. So if you're building a brand new, it's actually cheaper than the last option too. So that's just kind of thinking about things in a different way. And I'm always trying to use drawings like this to advocate for different way of doing things, but maintaining the same elements at its root anyway.
01:28:40:16 - 01:28:54:06
John Simmerman
So I love it. And, and we do see that we have a much, much safer crossing here. We've, we that is a continuous level for people on bikes or somebody walking across in this area. So that's great.
01:28:54:09 - 01:29:17:08
Mike West
So this kind of shows us yeah, it's a bit of a progression of a trail crossing. So you go from typical to one with chokers on it to a more continuous type raised trail crossing and that line shows how you can still accommodate fire truck turn movements because you make the flared approach wider. So a lot of times as a planner and even as advocates, when you're proposing something, you also have to think, through all these pieces of what you may get response.
01:29:17:08 - 01:29:34:02
Mike West
You know, if I'm proposing something, is like, well, how's the fire truck going to get down there so you can show, you know, look, you can still maintain the same turn radius. You just have to do it at a safe speed, but it makes it more comfortable and safer for the person on that bike. So So that last one was what used to be the standard for Lehigh.
01:29:34:02 - 01:29:55:28
Mike West
The middle one of the chokers is the current. We're looking at something like this, at least on private streets and private accesses at this point. But again, you kind of have to take baby steps the way I guess not always. If you have the political will, then you could certainly jump to the ideal situation. But if you don't, then sometimes you have to take baby steps and stretch that taffy and get people comfortable with new ideas.
01:29:56:00 - 01:29:58:14
John Simmerman
How often are you dealing with private streets?
01:29:58:16 - 01:30:27:07
Mike West
Also got quite a bit. And in some of our planning communities and and things, especially on our west side of town so there there's quite a few private streets. This right here shows kind of more of a temporary situation If you want to make some improvements without a lot of budget you can really do your street space. This is actually from one of my YouTube videos that I did just to show like if you can just change your striping and switch some reflector posts, not the ideal protection, but in the short term this could be the next step towards a more permanent solution.
01:30:27:10 - 01:30:47:13
Mike West
In a two way bike lane is not always going to the ideal situation given every context, but it just shows how you can reuse that the cars will slow down. You have more of that friction on the sides with not having that space there. So this here is just to show again, visualizing, here's a major roadway, putting a trail on it does give you a place that's separated to right.
01:30:47:13 - 01:31:07:02
Mike West
But it doesn't totally address all the safety issues. You really have to look at the road design as well. So that's kind of what this again, not to say, should be one lane each direction, but again, it's ideal to minimize the number of lanes where you have pedestrians and and people riding bikes involved. And again, continuous crossings really look at the big picture.
01:31:07:02 - 01:31:21:13
Mike West
The roadway design has such a profound effect on the safety of people, even, you know, that truck pulls out front of that car right there. That car is going 50 miles per hour. Those drivers are also in a high risk of injury fatality.
01:31:21:16 - 01:31:25:18
John Simmerman
Have you had any transformations like this?
01:31:25:20 - 01:31:45:13
Mike West
Not at this point in the city where we're getting some of the more temporary transformations, like the one with showing the kind of parking protected cell bike lanes. So we do have some of that coming online. So again, taking steps, different directions, seeing what people think about it and hopefully building more support for more permanent solutions as we move forward.
01:31:45:15 - 01:32:19:10
John Simmerman
Yeah, And what's what's interesting too, is and I kind of predicted that the answer was no, we haven't had any transformations of these, but this is one of the most dangerous types of roadway designs that we have a five lane road. You've got that signature continuous center turn lane there. It's almost as dangerous as the, you know, the dreaded four lane road where, you know, they're just absolutely horrific when you look at the number of of casualties and serious injuries and fatalities on that.
01:32:19:16 - 01:33:02:04
John Simmerman
And we're talking I'm literally talking about motor vehicle crashes in motor vehicle lives lost, motor vehicle driver life. These are some of the most dangerous designs that you can have just because it encourages incredibly high speeds. And so what's really interesting about this type of design and when you start working with communities and being having communities be open to this is maybe it's maybe this street was what was on the drawing board and you know, originally and they're saying, well, no, you know, we don't need do that and we shouldn't do that because the context is such that the number of lives lost and serious injuries is completely unacceptable we need to rethink what this
01:33:02:04 - 01:33:05:21
John Simmerman
corridor looks like and turn it into something more like this.
01:33:05:23 - 01:33:21:04
Mike West
And that's also where the whole functionality idea comes into it, too. Sometimes you have to have so many lanes because you have so many access points and turn turn signals, all this kind of stuff. So if you can look at the functionality and the way a road is being used, perhaps it can more efficient on fewer lanes.
01:33:21:10 - 01:33:23:02
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah.
01:33:23:04 - 01:33:41:12
Mike West
So this is just to show how I've even worked with other advocates to look at different solutions. This is in Ephraim, Utah. It's a little college towns, no college here, but they had a state road that comes through here that really splits the town up. So we actually presented to their mayor and said, hey, look, there are some different options you could look at.
01:33:41:14 - 01:34:05:01
Mike West
This first slide here shows no, the traffic volumes really aren't anywhere near such that you actually need four lanes, one Lane east direction would more than handle the amount of traffic they're seeing. So a step in the right direction would be something like this where you get separate crossings, separate a bike lane space, visually narrow the street. You know, all these features coming on plate to both make it a better place to to go to.
01:34:05:04 - 01:34:25:13
Mike West
The ideal situation would probably be a car free street considering you have all the businesses and this is the heart of the town, you know, that main function should actually go around this rather than through it. But if for some reason you can't get the support because this is a state road to move that function somewhere else, then you know, you can at least try and slow people down and create a little bit more of a people oriented place in the center.
01:34:25:16 - 01:34:45:17
John Simmerman
I would say that that would be like a step too far is the state highway road. And you do have businesses right along here that would be like freaking out that, you know, have, you know, motor vehicle drivers don't have the same level of access that they had before. But this is speaking to the what I was just talking about.
01:34:45:17 - 01:35:15:23
John Simmerman
This is one of the most dangerous roadway designs that you can have a four lane road. And so the design that you guys came up with is absolutely brilliant. In my mind. You're bringing trees into that space. You preserve seeing motor vehicle, car parking spots, which is going to make the businesses really super comfortable with the fact that, you know, a person still get there and you're maintaining, you know, viable access, you know, through this area for motor vehicle traffic.
01:35:15:26 - 01:35:41:10
John Simmerman
And so, again, really kind of the best of all worlds. Again, you're bringing green back into the space, you're bringing livelihood to it. It's much more accessible from a walking and biking perspective. And ultimately it's also going to be a much more pleasant environment for those businesses there because people will want to be there. It's no longer a four lane highway through the middle of their downtown.
01:35:41:13 - 01:35:57:01
Mike West
Really. And I will clarify that will clarify on that one that they're they're doing a study on it. So we just presented that as an idea not to say that it was exactly what they're doing, that like, hey, this is the kind of stuff we're trying to, you know, just like you said, trying to get the best of both worlds step in the right direction.
01:35:57:01 - 01:35:58:20
Mike West
Here's what we should be looking at.
01:35:58:22 - 01:36:21:24
John Simmerman
Well, for that town, folks, if you're watching this video, do it. That's that's pretty darn brilliant. And that's just, you know, taking this from, you know, my quick little analysis of looking at it and and looking at it from the reality of just how disastrous lane roads are and how much they encourage speeding. And they really do kill small towns.
01:36:21:24 - 01:36:24:19
John Simmerman
They really do kill businesses. So, yeah.
01:36:24:22 - 01:36:25:24
Mike West
Yeah, absolutely.
01:36:25:28 - 01:36:37:08
John Simmerman
All right. Before I let you go, Mike, I absolutely have to give you a little love on your YouTube channel. So talk a little bit about your YouTube channel. What are you trying to achieve with this?
01:36:37:10 - 01:36:52:14
Mike West
Yes, I know. I'm a very passionate guy, so I'm like I just you know, obviously I have a lot of influence with my job, but I just want to spread the word in a way. It's kind of like how I can organize my thoughts as well. So I like to get the word out there. I really like to make things visual.
01:36:52:14 - 01:37:12:05
Mike West
And so I decided to start this YouTube channel and and get that out there. But I really love to to do to do this work. I just have, you know, my my job actually takes priority, especially my family. I've got a son special needs that takes a lot of time. So I don't I'm not super frequent on when I can get stuff out, but I'm always working on a project.
01:37:12:05 - 01:37:30:06
Mike West
So right now I'm really working on the videos for the Safe Systems approach and I'm even working on some kind of music videos, redoing some songs and putting it to more of a planner. And I think one of them I'm working on is called Strobe Busters. So I guess the purpose of that will be entertaining and make a point as well.
01:37:30:06 - 01:37:54:13
John Simmerman
So fantastic. Well, I definitely wanted to give you some love on your your channel here and encourage, Hey everybody, you know, make sure you pop on over to Mike's channel here. Bike Quest with Mike West And I have to, you know, comment on the fact that you're most watched video of all time was from two years ago where you were it's titled i.e., traffic The Truth.
01:37:54:13 - 01:38:01:03
Mike West
I had traffic tickets like everyone else, but it's how you deal with is the important part so far. Yeah. It's going to see people gravitate to that.
01:38:01:03 - 01:38:22:12
John Simmerman
Like this has been such a pleasure having you on and so much fun. I've really been enjoying all the work that you've been doing and you and I have been trying to connect for some time too, to meet up in person. So that will happen at some point. I owe you a visit to your area and I look forward to hosting you here in Austin one of these days and.
01:38:22:12 - 01:38:27:10
John Simmerman
I just want to say sincerely thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.
01:38:27:12 - 01:38:30:28
Mike West
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me here. It's an honor, everyone.
01:38:30:28 - 01:38:46:05
John Simmerman
Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope enjoyed this episode with Mike West. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up or leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the channel just click on this subscription button down below and ring the notifications below.
01:38:46:05 - 01:39:07:29
John Simmerman
And also be sure to subscribe to Mike's channel like West with Mike West. And if you're enjoying this content, please consider supporting my efforts on Patriot and buy me a copy on YouTube. Super. Thanks for being there. As well as buying things from the active town store, I've got some really good stuff out there, including sweets for people, coffee mugs, t shirts, all sorts of good stuff.
01:39:08:02 - 01:39:31:20
John Simmerman
Every little bit adds up and helps out a great deal and keeping this channel moving forward. And again, thank you so much for tuning in today. It really means so much to me. And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers. And again sending a huge thank you to all my active town's ambassadors supporting the channel on Patron Buy me a coffee YouTube Super.
01:39:31:20 - 01:39:43:06
John Simmerman
Thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated. Thank you all so much.