Need for social marketing initiatives around installation of neighborhood traffic calming initiatives: Salt Lake City

Gosh, years ago I wrote about an approach to planning I called "action planning," focused on implementation, and to be successful included elements of social marketing and branding and identity.

My thinking about planning and how it should be performed has moved from action planning ("Social Marketing the Arlington (and Tower Hamlets and Baltimore) way," 2008, "All the talk of e-government, digital government, and open source government is really about employing the design method," 2012), to best practice revitalization planning ("Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning," 2017) to transformational projects action planning ("Updating the best practice elements of revitalization to include elements 7 and 8 | Transformational Projects Action Planning at a large scale," 2024, "A wrinkle in thinking about the Transformational Projects Action Planning approach: Great public buildings aren't just about design, but what they do," 2022), with stops for destination marketing, cities as brand management, and risk management as areas that elected officials should be very much concerned.

Traffic calming has been a revolutionary treatment in sustainable mobility focused transportation for the last 20+ years.  Most people probably think of it as speed bumps, but there are many different treatments.

But it's not widely understood, especially in places that are dominated by the car, like Salt Lake City.  Like many cities, Salt Lake is a leader in trying to balance the modes with a renewed focus on sustainable modes--walking, biking, and transit.  It's doing some great bike infrastructure, some of which we will be trying to get for the perimeter of Sugar House Park.

A traffic lane was removed and an in-ROW bicycle lane was installed on 900 East adjacent to Fairmont Park.

The Livable Streets Plan is an implementation focused plan aiming to bring that about ("In Salt Lake City, here’s what kind of ‘traffic-calming’ projects could be coming to your street," Salt Lake Tribune).  The city has been investing in such efforts for awhile, and the CIP process prioritizes monies for this action item.

My one criticism of the approach would be a lot of the residential streets in Salt Lake are "naturally traffic calmed" already based on their design, width, etc., and often people don't understand when treatments are implemented, often with little community involvement.  

(Many DC residential streets are similarly set up.  And I've argued that a bike boulevard program is really a traffic calming program irrespective of the bikes.)

That being said here and there are exceptionally wide neighborhood streets too, and traffic calming is a lot cheaper that reconstruction to make the street narrower.

So far, using the concepts of "Tactical Urbanism," many of the projects are either prototypes or done simply, but IMO there can be seriously negative aesthetic effects.

-- Tactical Urbanism Manual, volume 1
-- Tactical Urbanism Manual, volume 2
-- Tactical Urbanists Guide to Materials and Design

"Temporary" can be a long time.  Years.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mayor Erin Mendenhall and council member Dan Dugan swap out a 25 mph speed limit sign for a new 20 mph sign in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, July 27, 2022.

In 2022, the city reduced the street mph to 20mph for most neighborhood streets, which in a car oriented city, is at times controversial ("Salt Lake City Council lowers speed limit to 20 mph on 70% of city streets in unanimous vote," "Salt Lake City swaps first 20 mph speed limit sign in initiative for safer streets," Salt Lake Tribune).  (There is a local walking and transit advocacy group called Sweet Streets, that helped promote this change.)

I live on a street that's pretty wide--so cars speed quite a bit, even though it's only one block long, between two households with children, a weird intersection confluence, and about 20 children in close by houses, many of whom come to play next door (the house is more popular with kids than the one with the pool...).

The parents have been hyper about speeding cars, and the neighborhood and our District 6 Councilmember is more concerned about traffic safety these days because a nearby elementary school had a traffic fatality last year ("Yard sign, Person running for District Six Council in Salt Lake using traffic safety as a campaign issue," 2023).  

So about six weeks ago, that helped some of my neighbors get a temporary roundabout placed in the weird intersection.  Anecdotally, I think it's contributed to speed reduction, but I don't think they did of study of prevailing speeds beforehand.

It's not fancy.  It's temporary.

Sometimes kids play in it, but with supervision.  That scandalizes my MIL, but I'm not about to get into a debate with her about how the car companies and their allies changed the definition of street to be car centric instead of people centered.  See Fighting Traffic:The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.

Road Witch was a campaign in England 20+ years ago, focusing on rebalancing the use to streets toward residents, not automobiles.

But there has been opposition, both in Nextdoor, the neighborhood e-list, and through flyers distributed to nearby houses (I'm next door to the roundabout, and obviously with my sustainable mobility proclivities am supportive.)

I think that the real problem has been lack of neighborhood communication and education, heightened by the reality of car centricity, which automobile dependent residents aren't inclined to question--they just take it for granted.

The roundabout just popped up with no notice.  It's cheap looking.  There have been no explanatory materials placed in the roundabout or on people's doorknobs--both about why this has been installed and what temporary means in terms of the plastic poles.

At the Long Beach Beach Streets event, they prototyped sustainable road treatments, but with explanation.  A signboard like that needs to be made for SLC traffic calming treatments, including roundabouts.

There should have been a "block party" to introduce it (the same goes for other traffic calming treatments elsewhere in the city).

Community pop up event showing what a greenway could look like in their neighborhood.  Minneapolis Star-Tribune photo.

People hanging out in a parklet.  Parklets convert street parking spaces to alternative uses.

Salt Lake City Transportation Department pop up booth at Poplar Grove Park.  

They have the capacity for community communication.

WRT temporary, I imagine it could become something more like the roundabout at Hollywood Avenue and 1000 East, but again, no two way communication.  This is a photo not of that roundabout.  It's pretty, not cheap.

Ironically, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, community communication is part of the planning process:

Quick-action pilot projects could start as soon as this fall, but an overhaul may not begin until late 2024. “There’ll be outreach and engagement and development of the plan and the design neighborhood by neighborhood, followed by bidding it out and finding contractors that can build it for us — often, that process takes two years,” Jon Larsen, the city’s director of transportation, said . 

Across the board, implementation is dependent on future funding, which Larsen said was requested in this year’s capital improvement budget. Once the program has its team on board, they’ll begin prioritizing roadways to start on with guidance from the city council. “I know that sounds like a really long time to people; we’re hoping to find ways to speed up that process, and especially having more staff, I feel confident we will be able to,” Larsen said.

I think this and other traffic calming projects in the city show that the community communication element is an afterthought.

I do believe the people in my neighborhood would be more supportive if they knew the reasons why it was installed.  It has full walking infrastructure even though most people drive, although there are plenty of dog and child walkers.

And this need for community communication should be lesson for transportation departments more generally.  Explanatory signage is a must.