Redesigning Main Street

This week, we're sharing stories from Strong Towns members who will be speaking at our transportation summit in Tulsa, OK beginning on Thursday, March 30. Paul Fritz, along with his friends and colleagues Dave Alden and Mitch Connor, are leading a workshop entitled "Building Citizen Organizations to Reintegrate Commuter Rail into Communities." Their workshop will share insights about how to organize your community to promote beneficial, financially sound rail initiatives as an alternative to car-centric cities. Today's article by Paul Fritz is a repost from his blog, Small Town Urbanism. It takes a deep dive into a local street in his town of Sebastopol, CA and considers how it could be better designed to prioritize pedestrian safety—not just car traffic— as well as economic productivity.

And if you're interested in reading more from Paul, take a look at his hilarious and brilliant blog post about "Slow Down Cat," Sebastopol's own, larger than life, traffic calming kitty.

As someone who moves through town primarily on my own two feet I am constantly aware of how our public infrastructure is completely geared toward the automobile. Main Street feels as if it were designed to move cars through town as quickly as possible at the expense of any other user of the public right-of-way. To their credit, the city has been installing new crosswalks to help increase pedestrian visibility on the primary routes that cross our town, which include five along the roughly 1.5 mile length of Main Street. Generally, I think these have been successful in increasing pedestrian safety. But we still have a long way to go before we have a balanced system.

Read the rest of the story here.