I don’t see this as pros and cons, more shades of grey in knowns and unknowns.
In general, I’m supportive of anything that improves walkability and mobility. I also support increasing safety and making walking along Woodward more pleasant. I believe that the experts (elected and hired) have acted in good faith and that the design we’re adopting is what they claim will protect pedestrians.
Urban mobility and design is not my forte or focus, and while I’ve done some research on this my findings haven’t really correlated to our situation. For instance, I find that MDOT is very supportive of road diets, but in a 4 lane to 3 lane conversion analysis, they acknowledge that there is tremendous variation in the results of road-diet implementations. While most sites result in a reduction in crash frequency, for a few there were crash-frequency increases. While road diets are effective in decreasing left-turn crashes by taking the turning movement from the through lanes and putting it in a two-way left-turn lane, right-lane crashes may increase because of the resulting traffic volume increase in that lane. So, whether there were increases or decreases would appear to largely depend on existing conditions at the implementation site. I have no idea how those findings may be applicable to a much wider road- for instance, would we have fewer right-lane crashes due to our ability to spread traffic across additional lanes? I assume as much, but I’ll admit to some anxiety about traffic backups worsening during peak traffic in the right lane.
It’s no surprise that things come down to cost and citizen demand and information for me. I think we didn’t do a great job of explaining to concerned residents that funds for the project come from Major Streets, which is funded by gas tax (Act 51 dollars), not property tax. This lack of clarity and fear of ongoing high taxes has created an atmosphere of distrust that we may have been able to avoid. Conversely, since we’re approving a project without knowing the actual final cost, I worry about the disappointment and public perception if the price tag comes back higher than the 1.2M we said we wouldn’t go over. I also worry that if we expend the funds from Major Streets and we have something big that would typically be taken care of with Major Streets funding, the funds would need to come from elsewhere, such as the general fund, per our DPW Director.
It’s funny- in general people say that one of the things they love the most about Ferndale is walkability, but they were also most concerned about walkability. In terms of citizen demand, residents when surveyed were very concerned about safely crossing Woodward, and about creating a more pleasant experience to walk along Woodward. I don’t know that the vision of protected bike paths is what those folks who wanted better walkability envisioned when they said they wanted a better walking experience, but our long-term vision would be to increase sidewalk width and that I think would be embraced by the widest number of residents.
Final thoughts: I almost didn’t support this because I truly believe this should be a county initiative, funded more broadly and with buy-in all the way up the corridor. However, it’s my understanding that there is support for this from our neighbors to the north in Royal Oak and Berkley, and I hope that MDOT will allow them the ability to have a connecting road diet despite what appears to be heavier traffic (per SEMCOG/MDOT traffic CFF Candidate Questionnaire, rev. 2021 / pg. 3 analysis). Otherwise, this modification will fall short of the intended goal of creating more opportunities for meaningful transportation and would feel more recreational.
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