Despite its proximity to the Aldridge Creek Greenway and a major shopping center, 4 Mile Post provides few complete connections for people walking and biking to reach key destinations safely.
To learn more about people’s experiences and perceptions of 4 Mile Post, the Huntsville team partnered with the South Huntsville Business Association to hold a listening session with over 40 attendees from the local community. They also worked with the Rotary Club and AARP to go door-to-door to business owners and local residents, inviting them to come share their thoughts about the street. Finally, they invited councilmembers, law enforcement, and traffic engineers to come listen to what the community had to say.
The overarching themes that emerged from these conversations and listening sessions were concerns about speed and failure to yield. Thanks in part to 4 Mile Post’s raceway-like design, as well as the under-used center left turn lane that people use to pass other drivers, people frequently sped along the road at dangerously high speeds and seldom yielded to people waiting to cross.
The Huntsville team used this feedback to guide the design of their demonstration project. When the time came to launch the project on the ground, they continued to bring the community along, staging a ribbon cutting and safety-themed block party to unveil the improved crossing, in collaboration with the fire department, local businesses, and the same organizations who helped with community engagement. In addition, two elected officials attended the launch event, creating an important opportunity for face-to-face conversations with local residents, who overwhelmingly expressed gratitude for improvements at the site.
“People couldn’t stop thanking us enough for just making it safer
and all the little implementation that we were doing.”
—Rachel Bolton, City of Huntsville
The team from Huntsville adapted their design after facing resistance to their project. Instead of shifting traffic into the under-utilized left-turn lane, they used temporary paint to create a buffered space in the shoulder for bicyclists to ride from the Aldridge Creek Greenway to the crosswalk.
However, even though the team’s analysis showed that removing this extra travel lane would not create delays for people driving or reduce capacity of the road, decision-makers pushed back on any project—even a temporary one—that might be perceived as taking space away from drivers. This resistance highlights the challenges creating a culture of safety in a transportation system that has historically prioritized the high-speed movement of cars over all other users.
Undaunted, the Huntsville team adjusted their project’s design. They used paint and flags to outline a temporary, off-road multi-use path leading from the greenway to the crosswalk, and they introduced a type of signal only recently approved by the Alabama Department of Transportation for use throughout the state called the Rectangular Rapid Flash Beacon, or RRFB.
At the launch event for their project, the Huntsville team taught elected officials, partners, and members of the community about the importance of safer street design.
Thanks to feedback from the community on their temporary demonstration project, the Huntsville Team has already made changes and improvements following implementation. For example, they adjusted the height of the RRFB signs to improve visibility of oncoming traffic. They are also exploring other solutions to make permanent improvements at the intersection, such as installing decorative thermoplastic to make the crosswalk more visible and attractive, as well as providing a textured surface to aid people with vision impairments to navigate the crosswalk. Now that they have seen the project on the ground, Huntsville’s traffic department also recently added a curb extension on the north side of the road, which will encourage drivers to slow down as well as shorten the distance people need to cross, greatly reducing stress particularly for older adults worried about racing against traffic.
Lessons learned
Based on Huntsville’s experience transforming 4 Mile Post, communities around the country can learn from the following lessons to launch their own safety demonstration projects:
1. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
Spread the word about what you are doing and why proactively to elected leaders, department heads, members of the community, and local media outlets. This is particularly important to gain support for projects that balance safety with other trade-offs, or even with just the perception of other trade-offs. If you do not lead with a strong message of safety, people may jump to conclusions and create unnecessary opposition to your project. The Huntsville team, through strong partnerships and persistence, overcame such resistance when decision-makers got the wrong idea that their project would cause significant delays for drivers, but you do not always get a second chance to make a first impression.
2. Use the project as an opportunity to develop new relationships and partnerships.
Demonstration projects are great opportunities to work with community organizations you have not collaborated with previously, or to strengthen existence partnerships. In the case of Huntsville’s project, they worked closely with the South Huntsville Business Association, AARP, and the Rotary Club to engage local residents and business owners, creating new lasting partnerships in the community and in these organizations in the process.
3. Do not give up.
Safety does not happen in a vacuum, and unfortunately the trade-offs that come with safer street design can sometimes seem insurmountable. Decision-makers and community members may resist projects that appear to take time or space away from drivers or that upset prospective voters, especially if they do not understand the importance of these projects for everyone’s safety. Persistence in the face of resistance, proactive communication about the project’s intentions, and especially direct community engagement to inspire new allies and champions for this work all contribute to the success of Huntsville’s demonstration project, in spite of the obstacles they encountered along the way.