A2Politico: How Utterly Pedestrian– The DDA’s State Street “Redesign” is All About Cars

by Patricia Lesko

Ann Arbor and the environment need expanded non-motorized transportation infrastructure. The need is particularly acute on Main St., State St., and Liberty. When the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority (DDA) came out with a “redesign” plan for State St., a roadbed up redesign, it was an opportunity to embrace the City’s environmental goals, particularly carbon neutrality. I expected to see more non-motorized and alternative transit infrastructure. However, what the DDA Board has delivered to taxpayers is nothing more than very, very expensive lipstick on a pig. The DDA’s redesign focuses squarely on parking and cars. Welcome to more ZeroVision fauxgressive, greenwashing. The DDA’s vision for State Street is like the blind leading the blind.

The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority (DDA) members appointed by the Mayor—a chef, a banker, real estate brokers, an entertainment investor, a Bodman attorney (where the City Attorney was a one-time partner) and a local “conversation curator,” recently released their “vision” for a multi-million dollar “redesign” for State Street. The Smith Group design includes parking on both sides of the street. It also includes widening sidewalks to make “pedestrian walkways,” and traffic calming to improve safety for pedestrian and bicyclists. There are trees and new gutters, and raised pedestrian crosswalks. The plan calls for bicyclists coming to the end of the William Street bike highway across from Angell Hall (on the U-M campus) to spill out onto the State Street new pedestrian walkway. There are sharrows in both directions of the narrowed street.

Including sharrows in a street redesign is like including an outhouse in a bathroom update.

As of 2019, Ann Arbor had only 89 miles of dedicated bike paths, and 13 miles of sharrows, according to the City of Ann Arbor Comprehensive Transportation Plan. The city also had 69 miles of shared use paths. In comparison, Columbus, OH has 369 miles of dedicated bike paths. Stanford, CA has 288 miles of dedicated bike paths, and Berkeley, CA has 281 miles of dedicated paths for cyclists. Ann Arbor with its less than 100 miles of dedicated bike paths, is still in the non-motorized infrastructural Stone Age. The State Street redesign is a multi-million dollar stone-tipped spear for the Clan of the Cave Bear.

Why is the State Street redesign so environmentally regressive? For starters, we’re seeing the results of Mayor Taylor’s appointments of “conversation curators,” entertainment investors, real estate brokers, and lawyer cronies to the Board of the DDA. There are no civil engineers on the DDA Board, but there is one architect. He specializes in architecture education. Dr. Jonathan Massey is the Dean of Architecture at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Development. Dr. Massey, one imagines, must have stepped away from the Zoom meeting at which his fellow DDA Board members voted to accept the Smith Group redesign plan. Massey was probably searching for a Xanax.

Let’s start with the “sharrows”: “Shared lane markings (sharrows) should not be considered a substitute for bike lanes, cycle tracks, or other separation treatments where these types of facilities are otherwise warranted or space permits,” reads the Urban Bikeway Design Guide, put out by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). Sharrows can complement bike lanes, but they won’t bring the same kind of increase in cycling or improvement in bike safety. So doesn’t it make sense, then, that riding on the sidewalk would be safer for bicyclists? No.

State Street through downtown has high pedestrian traffic. Many studies (Aultman-Hall and Adams 1998; Wachtel and Lewiston 1994) have shown that crash risk, overall, is higher for bicyclists riding on sidewalks than for bicyclists riding on streets. As Moser (2014) writes, in locations with low pedestrian traffic and no bike infrastructure, “permitting cyclists to use the sidewalk is a cost-free way of preventing citizens from getting maimed.” In many cities, local ordinance forbids bicyclists from using sidewalks. Columbus, Ohio banned the practice in 2021. The Columbus Code of Ordinances prohibits riding a bicycle on any sidewalk citywide (Chapter 2173.10; notably, police officers are exempt). In Georgia, state law bans bicycles on the sidewalks of every town in the state, including all of the college towns.

So if sharrows combined with mixing pedestrians and bicyclists on sidewalks increase the risks to those who use alternative transportation, why doesn’t the State Street redesign include another two-way bike highway from Huron to Packard? Follow the money.

This is from the DDA’s 2021 Budget book. The DDA’s projects will focus on “Environment, Climate and Energy.”

Nice pictures. Below is the DDA’s 2021 budget. The DDA makes the bulk of its revenue from “charges for services” (parking). The DDA can’t afford to actually deliver on the grandiose goals (above) without parking revenue. If elected leaders were really serious about VisionZero and environmental goals, the DDA would, in theory, see its total number of parking spaces reduced, not increased. Former Ward 3 Council member Stephen Kunselman used to refer to the DDA as a “shadow government” for good reason. The DDA is skimming money from Ann Arbor’s downtown tax base and throwing it at “affordable housing,” “land use,” and “local food.” Meanwhile, downtown sidewalks go uncleared of snow and ice in winter and are garbage-strewn in summer.

In reality, the DDA’s State Street redesign that is focused on cars and parking is in direct conflict with Ann Arbor’s $250,000 per day A2Zero Plan to reach carbon neutrality. Cars, according to the City’s A2Zero Plan are the major source of pollution in Ann Arbor: “Clean, healthy air is critical to ensuring our health and community vitality. Research has linked air pollutants such as ozone and particulate matter to lung and heart disease, increased asthma rates, and other health problems. In our community, the major sources of these air pollutants include emissions from internal combustion engines (i.e., tailpipe emissions from cars)….” According to SEMCOG data, between 2010 and 2019, the percentage of people in Michigan who walked to work (1.9%) and biked (0.3 percent) remained virtually unchanged.

Ann Arbor’s elected officials are addicted to parking revenue, and the DDA is suffering from a painful (to taxpayers) case of mission creep. It’s a recipe for a car-centric, lipstick on a pig State Street redesign to be sold to taxpayers as a “vision” focused on “pedestrian safety improvements.” Oink, oink.