Public Works, the Walkable City, and Oklahoma City

Get Started in just a minute here. So welcome to on the park bench and public square conversation brought to you by the Congress for the new urbanism on the park bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in New Urbanism and allied industries providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time. The webinar series is a platform for seeing new members to engage debate and collaborate on the pressing issues of the day. Today we have public works the walkable city in Oklahoma City with planner Jeff spec and Public Works director, Eric winger and discussion with yours truly, Rob suit avail, and register for next webinar, which is Tuesday December 14 at 12 noon Eastern time. We have an author's forum on a book, less heat Asana the Healthy City the new garden city for the post Kovac 19 world, telling an architect Gabriel. Tally event he discusses his new book that explains the Healthy City, its development starting from the Spanish flu pandemic and responses from the garden city, passing through the experience of the urban villages and pocket neighborhoods, up to the 15 minute city, go to cnu.org slash resources slash on the park bench. And I wanted to let everybody know about Oklahoma City Sr 13 Oklahoma City with the registration starts tomorrow. December 1, and seeing you 30 is going to be March 23 through 26 2022. It's going to be seeing us first in person Congress since 2019. Everybody's looking forward to that we've had some great success with virtual Congress's but it's not quite the same as meeting your colleagues and hearing directly from people who are making a difference in urban design and development across the country and worldwide. Walking the city meeting your friends having drinks at the bar with, with some of the best planners anywhere and witnessing firsthand the city's Renaissance Oklahoma City you said some fantastic things that have happened over the last 10 or 20 years. And we're going to be talking about some of them today so learn more senior. org slash CMU 30. And we've got a great show today. Jeff spec needs very little introduction to the CMU audience or the urban planning audience, his name is almost synonymous with walkability. He's the author of walkable city rules and walkable city and co author of suburban nation. And he is principal spec and Associates, which is done in been involved in some of the most significant plans for cities around the country over the last 14 years. And prior to his private practice he was director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts presiding over the mayor's Institute on city design. Eric Wagner is Director of Public Works for Oklahoma City a city of 681,000. He's the director of public works for 10 years. He's overseeing major improvements in the walkability and public ground of the city's downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. Jeff and Eric have lots to talk about in terms of the transformation of Oklahoma City. As Jeff did the plan for walkability plan for Oakland city that was implemented. Project 180, and there will also be discussing how public works plays into walkable cities in general. I'm Rob student will editor of seniors public square and the interviewer today. We're going to have a brief presentation from both Jeff and Eric followed by discussion with me, followed by a q&a from the audience. So please use the q amp a function of zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you. And now I'll pass this off to Jeff. Hey, Rob. Thanks for having me. I just want to thank you for all the good work that you do and I'm recalling that we probably been doing this together. Since around 1995 I think I met UCNU three or four. I know I definitely talked to you it for when we signed the charter. But thank you for all you do and for being really the premier from the very beginning the premiere pro promo Gator of the Congress has ideas and best practices. Remember new urban news. How could we do that. And Eric I'm honored to join you today. Really looking forward to this. I have a lot to say and I always I always plan to say more than I have time for that means I'm going to talk really fast. But this is a quick crowd. This is a new urbanist crowd so I can, I can speed myself up and nothing will be lost. I'm going to share my desktop and maximize my show, not to give too much away before I start. So, I present you know all over the place internationally nationally, and a project I always present. I'll be it in a shorter version, then, then, today is Project 180 and specifically what grew out of the walkability study for downtown Oklahoma City, it was it was one of the first projects I did in my own firm. When I left the NEA in 2007. I believe this work was in 2010, maybe started a bit earlier, I think it started actually maybe 2017 2008 rob the one aspect of my bio you didn't mention is that I spent 10 years at DPZ so most of what I learned when I went to the NBA and that I still use in my practice. I learned from Andre Swanee and was with Twitter cyber can use those of you who haven't heard me present before will hear echoes of their thinking. In, in this presentation. So, this is what Oklahoma City look like in 2008, many of its streets look like this one all of this was probably the worst. It was a city that had been designed along a redesigned around a very auto centric modernist a plan. Most of what I am a proposed back in the mid 60s in the downtown was was not built thank goodness. as he as he proposed it, but the auto centric nature of his plans. And so the my favorite image is this one, although this is a bus station, it's not just for cars. But the idea that cars were the heart of the city and the city was sized around many more cars than it ended up, holding, and the actual gap between the number of cars that the city was welcoming and the number of cars that was actually experiencing turned out to be great fodder for changing the design of the downtown streets but initially was a source of of panic when prevention magazine, and I don't have the date on this but I'm going to guess it's around oh nine prevention magazine called Oklahoma City the worst city for pedestrians in the entire country so that was what the mayor was faced with Mayor cornet who I had met at the mayors and students who designed approached me when this came out and said, What can we do, and I said well let's do a walkability study and he said what's that and I said well I don't know, but let's figure it out together, and the. The first thing we did was we looked at the car counts in the downtown core and you can see from this image of 6009 that's 911 thousand 8000 5000 3000. These are very low car counts. Any engineer will tell you that who hasn't been brainwashed at least that to a two lane street can easily handle 10,000 cars per day. And that means, that's two lanes without, without center turn lanes, which which make the street, have a lot greater throughput. So you had all these streets that had car counts at or less, mostly less than 10,000 cars per day and yet they were typically sized as four lanes or more four lanes five lanes some six lane streets they were designated articles in the city's most recent downtown plan and they were they were designated to be maintained or remade or repaved at four to six lanes and I said why you've got this big disconnection here you know we're shared and could be comfortably at the at the at the threshold could be two lanes. Hudson Robinson forth, you know, these are the car counts, and yet they were size to be so much larger. Right, such as Hudson, which is the worst of the bunch. So that was one thing just the number of Wayne's. Another thing that we started discovering in the around the same time, and Alan Aaron whole well known writer came out with this now pretty famous article and governing magazine was about how destructive one way streets were to to safety, but also to business vitality he told the story of Vancouver, Washington, where they had tried you know this the the six B's of the 80s to bring the street back to life the bricks the berms the banners the balloons the the bollards in the band stands, nothing but the street back to life until as you see in the picture they reverted it to two way traffic the dot reluctantly gave in and allowed that to happen. The street was a great success story after that as told in this article in walkable city I talked about East Broad Street and Savannah were Christian so teal did a study and found that in 1969 when it was converted to one way, 64 64% of the businesses just disappeared. It was reverted back to to way in 1990, and almost immediately half of 50% more businesses came back and that's that's improved today. That's a story of business a story of safety in Louisville, Kentucky. Brooks, first, second and third we're all one way streets and they converted. They actually converted Brooke and first back to two way and they left, second and third as one way on the two ways car crashes dropped 48% crime went down, and the one ways crashes went up prime went up and their story after story and many of them are happening in places where I've worked across the river from Louisville. This was our plan for New Albany, Indiana, and they actually executed on this. They did it, they reverted the whole downtown back to two way traffic and with great results. Some of you may have toward this with me, when the CMU was in Louisville, and then another plan that I've worked on for Cedar Rapids where we turn this, this downtown into this downtown reverting all the one way streets back to to a. And this was done after Oklahoma City when we were a little more progressive about bike lanes yes this person is learning not to park in the, in the bike lane, but you get the idea. Anyway, what happened when my walkability study was completed for downtown Oklahoma City is that this tower was about to be built in the downtown core by Devin energy. It was going to create about $200 million in tax increment, and they were asking the question, what should we spend this this money on, and they pretty quickly reach the conclusion. As shown in this plan by Ojb the opposite of Jim Barnett who was the prime and I was a sub. Let's rebuild our streetscapes and our streets of our essentially our 50 block downtown core from building face to building face across every street. And my job was actually to do the curb to curb. So street by street in the, in the downtown. I did a plan that essentially eliminated almost half of the driving lanes and eliminated almost all of the maybe all Eric can confirm maybe all of the one way streets, replace driving lanes with parking lanes replace them with bike lanes, essentially doubled the amount of on street parking and created a rudimentary bike network. And then that plan was rejected. And this is the story I don't usually have the time to tell, but it's it's told pretty well by Laura story and Laura story was the project manager. For this exercise. And because I recently did a another walkability study in Tulsa. I asked her to create a memo and she created a four page memo of what happened in this project, and she's now retired but she was the program manager for this effort and God bless her because she had some nerve TC which is the was the city's consultant which analyzes all of their traffic efforts, looked at the scope, which of course had two way traffic and now we're driving lanes and bike lanes and smaller turning VDI and preference to the pedestrian. Public Works engineering staff accepted the report intended to move forward. The initial results reflected unacceptable level of service on the proposed grid search system. Public Works before Eric's time accepted the report, however project scope so the their revision would have added turn lanes in the third lane in many situations, however projects scoping decisions required all departments to, except the proposal planning staff objected, and the planning staff and consultants presented information about how it could be. There's a lot more to say but the key takeaway from this page that I want to share with you is that Laura joined us in putting her foot down and saying essentially if it doesn't have more than 10,000 cars per day, then it shouldn't have a middle turn lane, and that'll and then we got Troy Russ, a longtime gliding Jackson employee and now he's on. I believe you may work for Kimberly horn now but Troy Ross who was at that point independent. I think for $5,000 prepared an alternative traffic study that showed that we only needed to add a couple little left hand turn lanes, and that it wouldn't fail and reluctantly the city accepted that they accepted that study and we were able to go for it. So most of what I had planned was executed, or at least was accepted and perhaps eventually executed. And then I want to just quote Laura and her experience in working on this saying, the city has exploded with new recreation entertainment and eating venues, the demographics of our city have changed so much with the influx of young adults starting their careers downtown feels alive and Metropolitan, I believe this increased activity level has in large part been due to the downtown infrastructure infrastructure reconstruction so to have an engineer come forward and say that makes me very happy. It was a battle. Now some images here's a typical Street, as it was before. Here's how it changed here is like under construction. Here's one of the streets that just lost the lane so Park app was a three lane street essentially and here it is rebuilt as a two lane street wider sidewalks narrower 10 foot travel lanes. Here's one of several that went from one way to two way Harvey as you can see it's a basically a three lane one way before, here it is a lovely two lane to a with wider sidewalks, by the way, we would do this today we wouldn't have the center, yellow stripe in their recent studies show that a yellow stripe in the middle of the road adds about seven miles an hour to people speeds and when you remove it they go slower, but it's clearly a much better Street. Robinson Avenue was a four lane one way with probably I don't know 8000 cars per day on it. It's now a two lane two way and holds the street car that was built in the center of of Oklahoma City as well, here's the one of the main arterial so that through the downtown Sheraton before and after this is one of the streets the bike lanes were added. And you know this was done at a time when protected bike lanes let's just say that, that, that I wasn't using them yet. We would do this differently now and protect the site of the bikes, but at least the, there's a bike lane in the street. And that's the idea. So that's, you know, I always tell I always tell other cities, this is what you do if you have money. If you don't have money you can do most of it just with paint. But of course the other thing that Oklahoma City got out of it was a much improved landscape and wonderful trees that you'll see when you go there. I wanted to end and I know, Eric will be talking mostly about, about the downtown and and project one at but I wanted to talk with a about a less success of a story, which is the boulevard which I also struggled with when I did my, my walkability study because this was the news, Oklahoma City is going to swap a highway for a park and and this is 2008. Around the time I was beginning my walkability study there. and the idea now executed is that this highway that used to run through the center of downtown would be shifted, all new to a trench south of downtown, which would allow it essentially from from brick town, all the way West, to, to, to this area to become a normal city street and not have to carry that much traffic and certainly not have to carry it at speed. So here's what it looked like before. And this was the plan that I encountered when I was doing my walkability study and I said well this isn't the worst but it certainly isn't a park. And what would it look like if it were a park and in my walkability study I proposed a solution to lanes in each direction, but a true Park strip in the center is an alternative. Then, and Eric knows this story, then the state do t. And here's the key point, the state to to deal with the city was yes we will give it back to you, we will we will revert this this this thoroughfare to city ownership but we're going to design and build it first. And this is what we arrived that this is what I arrived at when I was invited to the first meeting on the design of the boulevard so you can see how the park. The park becomes you know the idea of a park becomes, not so much of a park becomes in the hands of the state do t just another massive highway and and Eric's going to talk about how much better we made it, or they made it than what was actually going to happen without the severe intervention of the city, but I kind of, you know, I gave it my best shot and tried to educate the design team, most of which were outside consultants, about the difference between highways and boulevards in terms of volume speed through, you know throughput versus access and safety achieve not through minimizing conflicts, but as as Alan Jacobs will tell you in the boulevard book by maximizing the potential for conflict which is what makes city safe. How the lanes need to be narrower how you need more on street parking and prismatic geometries as opposed to stream form geometries tighter curb radio tighter site triangles lots of intersections lots of trees you know what does what distinguishes these things because as Andre Stoney always says, you know, a Boulevard creates real estate value Well, a highway Sunder is real estate value. So, let's build a Boulevard and not a highway, and this ended up being my proposal and zooming in a bit. This plan then was mostly trees. Still two lanes in each direction, but a giant park in the center. That was not successful. Let's just say it was not successful. This is not not what all of it looks like but if you go there today, what you see is not particularly Park like it's not particularly Boulevard like and Eric can talk about how it's better than what it was but I do feel that there is a disappointing outcome and leaving us with this lesson, which is, do not let the dot design the street before they handed over a lesson they are learning exceptionally painfully in Seattle where you may be aware they buried the Alaskan way. And they buried it, they replaced it with an incredibly expensive multibillion dollar tunnel which is underneath the old Alaskan way. And here's the new Alaska, because they let the do to do it. So I think there's a big, a big lesson there, it's not always your choice is a city but don't think you're going to get a park. When you let the dot replace your highway with a quote unquote Street, but it could have been worse and that's my segue now to bow out and hand it over to Eric who's going to talk both about some of the things they managed to save. But then about downtown and Oklahoma City in general. so I'll stop my share and thank you for listening. Thanks, Jeff, I appreciate it also Rob for the invitation day and really just to pick up where we left off. I've been the director as Rob mentioned for public works here in culver city for 10 years and I, I didn't come in with a lot of the preconceived notions of maybe what other public works director said experience coming up through their careers so left a lot of room for imagination. One of the first projects that I was introduced to his project when it instead of really just pick up a little bit of this discussion and to this going here just real quick. Jeff was correct I mean it was a project that began in 2008, and as we looked at prevention magazine, Oklahoma City was ranked 500 out of 500 cities on on walkable city so there was definitely issues in Oklahoma City, But let's not forget I mean, Oklahoma City was a booming city in the 1980s with the oil industry, it was when the oil bass that a lot of buildings for vacated that really put us in the state that is in it. It required all the one way streets at a time but obviously a huge change when Devon energy decided to locate their corporate headquarters downtown. And again, when I started working for the city, almost 30 years ago. Oh my city downtown was a city with number of stoplights to simply flashed read at five o'clock because there was no traffic. They were designed for just a different era. But with Project one at. We did have an ability to convert roadways as Jeff mentioned from one way to two way likability on street parking, enhancing pedestrians zones and of course a lot of landscaping and lighting is 180 million dollars. It was originally forecasted for over 180 acres. And this is some of the typical cross sections that again as we worked with the Office of James Burnett, using a lot of the study information that Jeff showed really returning to complete street concepts like you see here and this is a definitely a model that was used throughout our downtown area, similar picture that the Jeff show this is the the fully grown and built out Reno Avenue. This was a high capacity street that now served by two lines in each direction. 11 foot driving lanes lots of landscaping that is fully matured, different than really a concrete city that it was before. You'll see a lot of the decorative lighting features that are now throughout downtown with, with a lot of those amenities, but it really did not end there. When private one at wrapped up. Public Works Department of Commerce city works very very closely now with the planning department, and what came out of that of course is our bike walk okay see masterplan which is the part of the city's comp plan. This is some of the PYD streets here that are in front of our city hall. This is Walker avenue that was a four lane thoroughfare before. What you see now is parking biplane and then a vehicle line and each direction. We've been really fortunate in Oklahoma City with funding opportunities. So when project went at funds were completely utilized we've entered into a nearly a billion dollar better streets safer city program. We've also had our maps three initiative, and then we're now launching into maps for maps for those that are part of this webinar. It's metropolitan area projects, it's a program that began back in 1993, with the first maps, it's a one cent sales tax that's basically been maintained in Oklahoma City since inception, it's building major facilities. Back to bike walk. We again completely reimagine not just the downtown area but we've reached out into other neighborhood districts. This is Western Avenue north of downtown that was formerly four lanes now converted to two lanes, using medians using chicanes using all boats using all those things to reduce those crossing distances. We're now in the midst of redoing our SEO district, again, a lot of the same features landscaping, never remains improvements connectivity to bus stops. And what's becoming more and more common here in Oklahoma City, it doesn't matter what kind of street that we're working on. We look at my clock and the bike master plan that I didn't connectivity throughout Oklahoma City. Every street that we design now there's a part of that bike plan is being reconsidered for reconfiguration, so you're finding now on a lot of the city's major arterial streets, nowhere in the downtown area this is going to be in southeast Oklahoma City on southeast 59. We're looking at more than four lanes of Baikal protected by clients, connecting to some of the, the area trail systems. So, use of a lot of the project one at details, it's not expanded immensely as we continue to build sidewalks sidewalks and connectivity, our trail system continues to expand. Again, all a part of the byproduct plan there's over 100 miles of linked trail in Oklahoma City, and then we continue to build out downtown, even after one at, you're now starting to see the emergence of protected bike lanes downtown where we've got the ability to start adding those now you're starting to see these buffer areas included. We're actually providing some delineate on several of our streets, this was again a four lengths section of Walker Avenue, you can see downtown in the distance, providing that connectivity with delineate or some buffer zones and bike lanes on each side. And then of course in a lot of our connector streets. So, lot of change in Oklahoma City since 2008, and it's not over. This is our recently opened a little over a year ago scissor tell Park. It provides for bike ability walkability, and this is adjacent to that Boulevard, that was mentioned that has been redesigned the boulevard just recently been completed. A lot of the landscaping is just not quite as mature yet that we are expecting it to be fully grown out here in the next several years but you can imagine the new Boulevard, especially with the conference here in Oklahoma City in the spring. Start emerging more and more as more like a Reno Avenue. This is going to be the view from the convention center, which the conference is being held at this is the scissor tell Park immediately to the west. This is again just one more of those users to show some of those items. So with that, no Obama says come a really, really long way there's a lot of partnering in Oklahoma City, not just with our two departments of public works in our planning department, but a lot of stakeholders, we reach out to the community business owners for input. There's just a lot of collaboration that just did not exist many many years ago and it's become our new normal. So with that I'd like to turn it back over to rob and, again, happy to participate today. So thank you for the invitation. Yeah, thank you so much Eric and Jeff for your presentations, and you gave a lot of a lot of details on on that alternate to be repetitive with these questions but just to go into a little bit deeper. Jeff, I think that I saw where you said that this was one of your favorite projects or your favorite project that you've done. And I wanted to ask you like what makes it so special in comparison to other downtown transformations. But it was just so bad with with with apologies to Eric and no apologies needed because he wasn't responsible. You know, I think the Oklahoma City that we both inherited. More than a, you know, decade or more than a decade ago had been been, you know, just reshaped entirely around driving the expression while you're not going to get the cowboy office horse was something that, that I heard a lot out there. And the, the willingness, well, I think, I think what makes it one of my favorites is how hard it was. And the fact that we were able to largely succeed in a context of, of getting getting stiff armed by the traffic consultants, and then the city's surprising Can I say that because at this time you know more than a decade ago there weren't that many cities that were that were flexible, but the city surprising willingness to overrule their you know well paid traffic consultants and and and and listen to us instead. Because planning really raised a stink and I'd raised a pretty public stink and, and, you know, there's a lot of battles we lose so when you when it, it's really, it's really special. I do you know I feel a little ambivalent with everyone coming Oklahoma City. You know this is a project that's a decade old or a little more and it's taken that long to build it out so on the one hand, we get the experience of seeing something that's been completed, as opposed to something that's, you know, under construction and, and mostly cones. And that's a benefit but I have to say that that you know as Eric showed in some of his more recent plans, we really weren't up to best practices for example with bike infrastructure. And so I think, I think folks who come in again with apologies to Oklahoma City boats folks come to Oklahoma City from San Francisco, or New York or other cities that have been really progressive for longer might not be as impressed as they otherwise might be. But if you're coming from a city that's that's more normal right and less of a trendsetter. You're, you're gonna, you're going to see a, an amazing amount that was accomplished in a reasonably short period of time. And I think especially for those that maybe were in Oklahoma City just a few short years ago or maybe as much as 10 years ago it's a completely transformed city so obviously encouraging you to come back and visit there's, you know as we speak about just the downtown area there are just a lot of things even in near downtown and outside of downtown that have remarkably changed as well so huge transformation. I'm talking a little bit, you guys both talked a bit about the history especially Jeff but I wanted to ask a question, with regard to public works and if you go back 100 years there were magnificent places to walk around in in cities in North America. and that was all about public works. And when you had Chicago the burden plan and what they built as an example. But many cities as well and then Public Works became more interested in cars forgetting about the human scale. Then in recent years, we've had a shift in that attitude, but looking specifically about how you know public works. You know, how do we how do we sort of return to a full view of Public Works is being about the public realm. Has that happened in Oklahoma City and. And how can that happen elsewhere. Sure, so you know of course is really different than a lot of cities, especially when we look at comparables so uncommon city population of over 600,001 of the things that we're still the largest genius by landers so we're still over 600 square miles, and city area. So our cities, diverse even in the way that it's laid out so we talked about the urban core. We do follow a certain design principle and standard that's highly walkable. A lot of, lot of bankability, but then as we move outside of Oklahoma City we get into suburban Oklahoma City. Again, we're still pushing a very walkable bankable environment that you don't see the same need for on street parking in neighborhoods as you do and say the downtown core, as we reach out even another tier and we look at a lot of the roars Welcome to city. There are places in Oklahoma City that you can still buy five acre parcels and have a home or a 40 acre farm if that's what you prefer. And we really have a different design model for that. So I think you find a really capable Public Works, one that looks at the city based on the needs of the certain parts of the city. We designed to to the need, but I'll go back to it really has a lot of stakeholder input. So, you know, we find that even on the walkable side, we're in neighborhoods, prepared funded plans in the hand ready to build sidewalks in certain neighborhoods have actually put petitions together, and asked Oklahoma City not to construct those sidewalks and those neighborhoods and we honor that. Now I would say that that's not the norm, but we have had several applications received that we've honored. But for the most part, we continue to build hundreds and hundreds of miles of sidewalks look on the city that have not been built in decades. We continue to launch out with new bike can activities trails and all those things that we've shown that really, really begin with the key when it. Eric brings up an important distinction between the suburban city and the urban city, Oklahoma City and other cities like it, particularly in that region. not fair you know I think probably when Oklahoma City was called the worst see for pedestrians in the entire country it's because they were looking at statistics across the entire city. And if you look at a city like Oklahoma City that's absorbed suburbs versus a city like Philadelphia that hasn't. The data is vastly different than what it would be. If for example Philadelphia suburbs were counted in the averages, that, that, that determine outcomes. So for example, you know, most urban places truly urban pre war places in the US are losing about five people per hundred thousand per year in traffic crashes. Most suburban places are, are losing closer to 20 people per hundred thousand per year and traffic crashes the US average is around 11, but that average of 11 is a melding of suburban data and urban data, and a city like Oklahoma City by including its suburbs is going to end up always looking a lot worse than it really is. But of course there's a deeper lesson which is why I brought the data up, which is that suburban places are extraordinarily deadly for drivers and also, especially for pedestrians. I wanted to ask you both. If you've seen much change in the thinking about public spaces and streets in the field of public works especially, and how you can encourage Public Works departments to care about walkable cities. And that's it, that's a great question for Eric and I'll let him. Let him take it but let me just quickly say that, that there are certain Public Works directors who care and and a whole bunch that I was falling I think he might have changed positions Every day he would tweet out some bike box that they've installed or some protected bike lane or some, you know, neck down intersection. And there's this, there's this new generation of people you know at the municipal level, who actually make it their mission to improve pedestrian safety and bicycle safety. I remember I showed up in San Jose, this is probably about five years ago, I showed up in San Jose and I was blown away by the downtown of San Jose, the bike lanes the trams certain details, and it really felt like Europe and I asked my tour guide, what's going on here and he said well you know, Jeff. You know how in every city is there's the, there's the city engineer, and then in every city there's also that guy or gal who spends every summer in the Netherlands, and as a total bike fanatic and only takes transit refuses to drive and well in in San Jose that's the same person. That's like okay. So I think, you know, as I think guys like me get older guys like us get older. I'm hopeful there's a new generation of Public Works. Folks, even after us, who make this they're there who are who are missionaries for for this kind of stuff. I think from, from my perspective, I think I kind of talked about it earlier I did not come in with a preconceived notion as a public works director being an engineer licensed engineer I'm also the city's city engineer. There was really pretty much a demand on my position from the council level from the mayor from the city manager that I absolutely develop a relationship with our planning department, and get more involved I think something that has changed knock on city is just that I'm now working with our third planning directors since becoming the Public Works director Russell Klaus was the planning director at the time, project when it was first implemented. And I will say that we did not agree on a lot of things. It took a lot of education on my part, I think it took some understanding on his part for us to meet in the middle, but I felt like we did that. A little bit sad when he chose to leave because I felt like I finally had met him, and we have that relationship going forward but I worked, then very closely with our second planning director Aubrey amatory. Now Robert McDermott, and. And that has thrived in now I'm working with Jeff Butler, but I would just tell you that it takes a real conversation. That doesn't just come up project project for Jeff and I it's sometimes it's a daily conversation, whether it's about bikes, or walkability, it's having me become more educated in the world of planning and some of those things that engineers just typically don't dive into. And I've chosen to do that, and it's provided for a lot better response when we have multiple departments that can respond to our city council and our mayor and our manager on successes. And it doesn't always mean that the Public Works director K is in you know to to all the requests that may become from an urbanist standpoint, there is still some engineering that's required that has to be done, there are certain things related to safety. access connectivity that we have to work through. But, Jeff and I have done I think a really good job for Oklahoma City and putting forth a model for all those different transit we're in it, features to move successfully forward in Oklahoma City, but it's it's a it's a real and a and a daily conversation that has to have. I wouldn't even before I get to the q&a. I wanted to ask, what were some of the specific lessons that you learned along the way. other cities. So let me start quickly I think the one that in oklahoma city that has been probably the most significant is the reduction on our language, especially one project one at first was conceived, you know, most oklahoma city streets were 13 and and 14 foot language and there was this conversation. Oh, let's drop them down to 10 feet at a work and we're given a list of cities that these 10 foot lanes existed in, you know, we looked at a lot of things locally, we looked at, you know, no cost a little bit different, there is slightly bigger vehicle here in Oklahoma City than in traditional cities maybe urban cities but we did set a land on 11 foot lanes. And we use those now city wide. We use those city wide at certain speed limit ranges we use those not just in our downtown urban core, but we're finding that we use those on a lot of arterial in our collector streets now that just hadn't been done before they came with experience we we had to try it and do a pilot project to show that they weren't convinced ourselves that they would function on Brooklyn city but it's become our new standard so we've taken several feet at a language Docomo city and, and if it again it's our, it's standard forward. And I'll just do my job of always pushing the envelope, Eric and say that they should be nine feet wide. And that, you know, the neck though, the, you know, every city you try for what you can and you get what you get. And 11 feet and Oklahoma City was a real a real accomplishment. The facto standard that they've put forward now is 10 feet. and they allow 11 for bus lanes and most bus most transit agencies will ask for 11. I've had some success pushing for 10 comprehensively in cities, and I point out those places where the lanes are even now, you know, my, my, my theory is that if two vehicles which even the duties right or only, maybe eight feet wide have two vehicles can pass each other and not cause a, you know, not shut the street down by rubbing fenders, then the narrower the better, because we want to see people going you know very slow speeds in the downtown core. The main thing that that I started to develop in Oklahoma City that I learned from that experience that has then kind of blossomed into a more comprehensive technique is what I would call the the downtown lean on it. So, Oklahoma City was the first of what's now added up to about 16 walkability studies that I've done for American downtown's in the last dozen years. And each walkability study includes in it. This idea of a lane audit, which is where you count every lane. You know we're arguing about induced demand and how actually the amount of traffic that we experience will be an outcome of the number of lanes that we provide but that's a very weak political stance, it's very hard to win arguments on the concept of induced demand in almost any American city and so the strategy we use as I discussed in my presentation is we find places were actually there are more lanes than the current traffic does demand and you can find those in every city, even quite congested cities. So, how many lanes. How wide or the lanes, as Eric suggested. Is there parallel you know what what are the other things that will cause traffic to go more slowly. Is there parallel parking. Right, are there bike lanes. Is it one way versus two way travel, something that I don't think I was yet, understanding in the Oklahoma City study which I've brought to almost every subsequent study is trading signals intersections for stop sign intersections. Because actually, if you have an intersection which is not overwhelmed with a ton of traffic. Replacing a signal with a stop sign will in the one time it's been tested and it was tested very thoroughly in Philadelphia across 200 signals, it will reduce injury crashes by by more than 50% So a typical audit also includes that and the typical plan I do for downtown might eliminate half of the, of the signals in favor of stop sign so you know it's it's a it's a series of techniques that have just grown and grown over the years this idea of eliminating center lines to get people to drive slower, there's there's probably legitimately 30 different things you can do. And more and more cities are starting to do them. Although Culver City hasn't done, a replacement of signal with the stop sign and so you want to the chat questions is about roundabout. We have looked around about several instances we actually looked at one on the boulevard and I had hoped it had more promise, it just did not provide for the engineering we even hired a, an independent planning engineering firm to study it for us and we did end up with just a great separated crossing at this location that I'm speaking of. But we have successfully completed our latest round about project that's adjacent to the Cisco Park. It's an urban core on Robinson Avenue at Southwest seventh and it's adjacent to our convention center this recently open so welcome to city definitely is continuing to look around about options. We're starting to explore those also to retrofit of the entire neighborhood settings as well. If not to just improve circulation but also possibly remove some of those stop signs it roundabouts our, our, our possibility of publicity and I do expect that we may see a few more in the downtown area. I'm a fan of I'm a Can I say I'm a fan of roundabouts but not not in the heart of downtown not where you've got, where you want to have a static pedestrian oriented shopping environment. I like to say that I like to say that roundabouts are the most pedestrian the safest, most pedestrian friendly automotive environment you can create, but they take pedestrians off axis. They're, they're tremendously safe, but they are an environment of dynamic motion not one of spaces that you, you really want to have one of my clients, brilliant man is Jim Brainerd who was featured on the front page of the New York Times last weekend for the hundred and 40 roundabouts that he's built in Carmel Indiana, where I'm working with him, and I approve of almost every round round about that he's done because they tend to be in in suburban locations on the edges of things. I wouldn't put it right in the heart of a CBD. Are there certain things with roundabouts if you can do to make them more or less pedestrian friendly and, I mean, came round about the badly done, or better done and how, how do you go about that i mean i don't want to get into something that's too specific but I think that the modern roundabout as it's currently practiced in you know when it's implemented these days is is about as good as it's going to get and it's not bad at all it's very safe. And it's, you know, it has other benefits in terms of noise and pollution and other things. You know here knowing and we have what's called a rotary, which is a traffic circle of pretty high speed. That's a different model but I think the techniques right now in terms of making them safe and welcoming are pretty darn good. The problem is that they don't really create the the sort of social environment in which you're likely to see a ton of people hanging out, stopping shopping, that sort of thing. So, so there are great for everywhere except that those main main intersections where you want to have urban life. One of our existing roundabouts in Auckland City was at Northwest 10th and Walker and I think you know as we show how it was able to evolve it actually has the street car that runs through that same roundabout as well my street car came well after project one at. So it was at least a design that was was adaptable. It's one that again it's still uses though NFL lanes that I mentioned it still has pedestrian walkability and safety features that are incorporated but it's it's now. It's a multimodal intersection, obviously with, with all that different modes of traffic including bike that that's part of the bike plan as well. agree that they're not always best in the urban core, for a lot of reasons. One of the next ones that we're starting to see around the fringes of our downtown area but again as we find the complex network of streets and Oklahoma City signals are not always the answer, especially when we have a fifth or sixth leg of traffic coming into an intersection. So I think you'll find in those cases, Oklahoma City is more opting towards around about option, and in lieu of a signal. There's question from Joel now that the city is that right away for the boulevard can finally revert to the city's grid. I guess take it down to the cities of grid and connect. And how do you go about doing so in the future. I think, except for that great separated section that's your Western Ave as much of the connection to the grid that could have been done we're actually made as part of the goal of ours design. So, there is connectivity there intersections at each of the adjacent North South Street so at this point we disable constantly do not consider the boulevard a highway. We do consider it city street it is now and the full possession of a call city so we we treated the same. I don't know what additional connections could possibly made at this point I feel it's already been integrated into the group. I'm just looking at the q amp a myself I see that Aaron has asked, Can you get the link to the study for the center line stripe. You can get it in this book walkable city rules were rule 71 is remove centerline stripes, remove center lines on neighborhood streets. And I wanted to do a few shout outs to my most recent book walkable city rules. And to my favorite recent book, which I hope all of you have read, or I have ordered Confessions of a recovering engineer by Chuck Moreau and which is just a fantastic new book that is so important and I hope you're all, I hope you're all reading it because you've already read walkable city. Let me see what else we got here. Well, somebody is asking whether you can get down to the 10 foot standard probably in Oklahoma City given the data that may be that may be hard after you've just sort of adopted 11 foot city wide but do you ever see that changing. You know one of the things I think was a blessing with the 11 foot, we integrated over four miles of streetcar into the downtown urban core and it would not have worked with a 10 foot line for the streetcar and not knowing what the original streetcar alignment was 10 foot would have been an issue so you know really going forward. I'm 11 foot, just works for Oklahoma City for a lot of reasons, I think, again, as we've looked at on street parking additions and things and the goal was to really to reduce the crosswalk distances in Oklahoma City, a lot of studies were done during one at one of our local reporters who still recording is Steve like Mayra mean showed some really dangerous crossings especially along what is known as ek Gaylord and Oklahoma but we reduced. More than 90 foot crossing, you know to I believe something like 55 feet. And again, that was done through lane reduction through lane with reductions, and that really was the goal and of course today to make more more walkable safer crossings in the 11 feet has done that most of our crossings are well under 50 feet. So, you know, just dramatic changes and I'm constantly 22 feet at our two lane intersections with no turn away. You get some interesting questions. You know, has Oklahoma City do as Oklahoma do to change their thought processes based upon the successes, local and with city. I'm guessing to a limited extent but maybe you can, or how can they be changed in the future, especially since, this, this, this, there's been so much success with different street designs in Oklahoma City. Yeah, for the bulk of our project which was, you know the project that we're talking about today. I mean, there, there were some initial traffic assessments done that, right, reducing it from the six lines to the four that it was, it was likely going to fail in Oklahoma City that we were going to have levels of service that we're not acceptable. When the boulevard was opened, and I think that's what the city really challenged with a project that had taken so long to construct a lot of local traffic it already rerouted. And so as we looked at kind of study figures as we looked at future projections for traffic volume. I mean, we really stuck to Boulevard that was four lanes, as designed. But I don't think that any of that has changed maybe how old is going to design going forward but as they work with the city on the future city projects. I mean I think that we will ask many of the same questions just based on our lessons learned at Oklahoma City, you know, when we go through those kinds of designs that the boulevard was really a one of a kind, that's not a. It's not a typical do t city project for Oklahoma. I don't I don't know if any other city in Oklahoma that's doing a similar project right now. Maybe Jeff, I mean how many walkability projects does a state Do you have to go through before they start to change. You know what's really frustrating to me is, I've done walkability studies in like three different Philadelphia cities, sorry three different Pennsylvania cities not Philadelphia. And they're all, you know, all these cities are essentially asking for the same thing from their state do t is they want to revert one way, multi lane roads to to a. They want narrower lanes. Maybe they want, you know more frequent intersections maybe they want to replace signals with stop signs and and what I've never been successful in getting them to do is to get together and collectively lobby. And maybe, I don't know, Eric or maybe you maybe either of you have heard of some example but I've never. I'm not yet been successful obviously you know I move on to the next projects and I can't be playing this role, but I've never been successful at getting a local municipality to form a kind of a class action effort against its do t because they all want the same things. It seems to me, they'd be so much more powerful. Maybe they've been divided and conquered in such a way that they're afraid to unite. So that they, you know, will lose out that, because they might lose out to some other municipality in terms of getting a street repaved or something but I've never. I've never been successful in seeing them do that. I will go back just to the relationships and Oklahoma I mean Oklahoma City just has a really good relationship with the dot. And when I say the dit we're talking about individual engineers and staff members with the department transportation and I think we choose to maintain that so when we do have a partnership projects were able to have a conversation about what's best for the city on a partnership project not necessarily what's just best for only the state. So again we keep those those active conversations going, and just expect good communication to deliver great projects. I'm going to just let people know that we're coming up on the hour and, you know, we're going to be posting this video in a day or so so folks need to go. At the end of an hour, and you have questions that haven't been answered possibly, they'll be answered in the next few minutes we're going to continue to go on. Since we do have some more questions. There's one from James about quick build projects I don't know if everybody's familiar with that term but essentially, transforming the street, very quickly using somewhat temporary materials or semi permanent materials, often costs less. It may last several years, maybe up to seven or eight or 10 years. In some cases, not 30 years, but it can be done more quickly. Has that been used in Oklahoma City, that sort of those sort of techniques. Have you considered that you're on mute. I think I wasn't familiar with the term quick deal with that I will share that. Our citizen survey outcome city has our condition a city streets is the number one city concern. So, our citizens are really looking for a lot of street resurfacing projects. And those to be delivered very rapidly we're currently resurfacing more than 100 miles of roadway in Oakland city each year. We're seeing our conditions dramatically increased but one of the things that we're able to do with those is, if we're scheduled for a bike lane project on that same street were able to in most cases accommodate a striping configuration or buffers are delineates at the same time that we're doing the resurfacing. So, although we don't have to say the bike lane money's available if we're already doing the street resurfacing which is majority of the costs were able to generally incorporate the by claim project, real time, and we're doing a lot of those projects see You know our preference, especially when we've tried to block out ball bounce, you know at intersections is they're not as effective as when you actually built the concrete curb and gutter. So we've really opted in Oklahoma City to kind of hold out for that larger project, especially when we're looking at safety and final implementation. We've got a lot of money in our bond program right now, we have quite a bit of money in our sales tax program so there's a lot of street enhancement projects that are full, full complete street projects that are, that are currently being designed on be implemented in the next year or two. I see a question from Ashley, which is I live in a neighborhood where there are no center lane stripes and people drive their cars down the middle of the street so they can feel more comfortable going faster, what can be done in a scenario like this too slow drivers down. I think the first thing I would say is don't stripe the center line because the indication is that won't help you know it's always about perceived opportunity for conflict, you know the drivers will set their speed. Unlike on a highway, you know you set your speed based on speed limit in a local street people will set their speed based on the speed at which they feel comfortable. And so the question is, you know, is what is the free space between cars parked on the other side of the road is parking just on one side of the road when it could be on both sides of the road. Does the road have extra space in which perhaps a bike lane could be striped, which would provide a perceptual narrowing of the street, so that the cars have less space available. There's this concept of advisory lanes, which even some do teams have been doing on more country roads, for example in Maine, where they would take a street which is maybe 25 feet wide and stripe it into five, which has no sidewalks are bike lanes stripe into five foot wide zones and I decided the street. So the cars are held to a 15 foot two area in the middle of the street understanding that when another car approaches they can go over the paint and into that sideline presuming no one's in it, anything you can do to can constrict the feeling of how much room you have is going to slow cars down, and I don't know, you know what, what Eric's department will will allow you to do some citizens just go out and stripe things themselves and see what happens. We don't recommend that. I figured, no car city we don't, we do not stripe our neighborhood streets for center. We do encourage, we obviously when you have a neighborhood, and you might have a visitor that needs to park on the street, it, it really is more to make sure that there's still a passable cord or through their, even if it's for emergency vehicles. We're currently also not striping most of our collector streets as center line by choice, but again if we get into arterial streets and the heavier traveled streets I mean we do find the center line is really needed for safety but yeah so of course it is not not straight call center lines. It probably also has a real estate effect because I have a brother in law said, real estate agent he says that the VC if he sees a center late yellow line in front of a house he'll take a few thousand dollars off of that house. The expectation because the, you know, it's not as nice as Street, you know it's there's more traffic and you know faster traffic. Anthony said that there was a study that highlighted the fact that over half of the private land area in downtown Oklahoma City was devoted to surface parking. Are you seeing that the redesign of the streets and the public space is starting to spur the redevelopment of these parcels. Now I see the reason for a lot of the bacon parcels was the urban renewal area, the late 70s and early 80s when I mentioned that the oil fast, and we are seeing redevelopment of lot of those sites that started decades ago, one of them maps initiatives in Oklahoma City was the maps for kids initiative which was a school reconstruction program on one of those they can parcels a new downtown elementary school was constructed in South, and south of downtown. The new Convention Center, the new Omni hotel, but they've constructed on vacant parcels. The new scissor tail park that we talked a little bit about earlier in this conversation was also constructed on many of those vacant parcels but we continue to see redevelopment of those. It's slow, but it sure that we're also seeing redevelopment of existing vacant buildings as well so there's a, there's still a vacancy rate in downtown of older buildings that just not been occupied for a while so it's really a mix, but not seeing a lot of construction of new surface parking lots, so there isn't a lot of new construction of surface lot there is structured barking, that's been constructed so there is a new garage that's been constructed adjacent to the Omni hotel that shared by Omnia the convention center. And there have been a few more structured parking areas that are constructed but we're seeing most of that as a part of mixed use development and Oklahoma City and new construction by Urban Renewal somebody asks about sister to park and its role in verbalizing downtown. And it also integrates and it seems to integrate some green infrastructure elements. Can you talk about that a little. Sure. Cisco spark was a part of our maps three initiative. It actually has a connecting park on the other side of the relocated interstate 40 that's connected by the sky dance bridge so it's a very active park it was purposely constructed near downtown really to be that, that, that front lawn of the new Convention Center. Um, it does have a lot of green technology built in it has an active pond. That was constructed or a small lake that was constructed within the park. You can actually boat red paddle boats and things that it actually collects all of the rainwater for the park. They use all of that storm water for the irrigation. The park as well. But many of the features of the park also just include a lot of low impact development type construction with a lot of the plantings that are throughout the park area with just high tolerance for for drought. A lot of natural grasses, things like that but definitely the pond is probably the most green portion of the infrastructure with the recycled rainwater for irrigation wanted to ask about this, the streetcar, and the I don't know if you've seen that many streetcar systems that have been built lately. Maybe Jeff you've seen some but it seems like there's there's light rail, there's most rapid transit being built, but not many streetcar systems. And I wanted to ask about the impact of that streetcar and whether it's really had the effect that was expected. How does it fit in with public works, the streetscape. You know, for the city street car and you know again as we as we as public course directors it's difficult, and there's a lot of infrastructure that comes with the streetcar that you just don't see above payment. And so, working the traffic civilization programs is probably been the most complicated, making sure that we've got efficiency in the route and ensuring that it is on time that the different stops. Simultaneously, Oklahoma City was also a city that for a starter route has built probably the most miles on its initial starter out any other city in the United States. We had over four miles as a part of our initial construction so when you look at other cities like Portland. They their initial route I believe was just a little over a mile initially. Now I know that they've grown immensely. But we use a lot of lessons learned in our planning but the civilization, having it to where we can cue the streetcar with the street cars communicating directly with the traffic signal programs. We are, we have a lot of difficulty especially when it's picking up curb side, but then needs to on a four lane street make a left hand turn from that right hand lane. So again, just a lot of the technology that's involved it's been probably the most complicated for us to have it operate multimodal it, but it's worked well. We've been able to integrate it fully in Oklahoma City, I'm it connects all of our entertainment districts, it, it's also one that we're looking at probably possibly a future expansion opportunity but I think with our lessons learned it will be much easier moving forward. And I would comment, you know. Eric's been talking more about the functionality of it and I think they did a great job. Given the limitations that they were faced with they did a great job of integrating it well. If you've read walkable city you know that I advocate for streetcars being done quite differently than the way it was done in Oklahoma City. I honestly think that, you know, given the history of street cars and the more recent examples of successful speaker systems like in Kansas City or, you know, most notably importantly with the pearl district or the South Lake Union in, in Seattle, that if there aren't developers who want to pay for that street car because it's going to bring value to their property or local, you know, central business district, folks who are willing to sponsor that street car because they understand that it's going to benefit them, then it probably doesn't make so much sense to build it. And I think that, you know, this maps program has been an incredible. You know boon for Oklahoma City, but I would argue that it wasn't the right thing to spend their money on and that it should, it should have been more of a grassroots effort. And as a result, I don't think you're seeing the ridership that you would otherwise see in a street car that was, that was more profit oriented from its conception has occurred as a result of the streetcar. I'm sorry, go ahead, how much development has occurred as a result of the streetcar we've seen and there is transit oriented development that's occurring along the route of the streetcar, I mean obviously that was one of the goals with anchoring in an actual rail, especially adjacent to Vega parcel so on the north end of Broadway Avenue in Oklahoma City. There's the new contemporary art museum that's been constructed. There's also been the resurgence of several new mixed use developments along that streetcar route just due to its proximity. So, you know we are seeing that occur in Oklahoma City, so I would say that yes that does work. We're seeing ridership improve last year was a terrible year for streetcar with pandemic and trying to get figures but when we look at the scissor tell Park and Oklahoma City, it's pretty difficult to find a parking space within blocks of that park on a Thursday Friday or Saturday. It's absolutely completely packed. We see a lot of the downtown venues and districts completely full of activity, but really high rider ships are being seen on the streetcar during those more weekend hours, it's not a commuter rail. It's a streetcar. And so I think we just need to define the difference in those it's not bringing in commuters from outside of Oklahoma City to work downtown it really is just a really easy way to navigate downtown. If you're downtown it's $1 per ride, so it's it's very affordable. It's air conditioned in the summer and it's heated in the winter so that provides again for some, some escapement from the weather should you be experiencing some weather in Oakland city while you're traveling across downtown or into breakdown. And I would add, you know any ambivalence aside about the streetcar that that I think one of the reasons to come to Oklahoma City, to be at CMU aside from CMU itself is where there's been a tremendous amount of successful efforts around those parks downtown like scissor tail and and others. I think Oklahoma City demonstrates really well. the, the benefits of investing in downtown parks. Well, and I think that's what you find on the street cars, not just the transit brand development, the connectivity to the Arts Museum connectivity to a lot of the entertainment districts the other parts which include the Mary Botanical Gardens, the Bicentennial So, yeah, please please come enjoy in the spring and take a ride. So we're gonna have to I guess we're gonna have to call it a day here very soon but is there any last word from from you guys on Oklahoma City or the, you know what we've talked about today. Well I'm excited to go back I haven't been there and in many years. So, I've been looking at the street maps and the Google but I'm very excited to be there, I think, I think that there are a lot of great lessons, and that it'll be a really fun seeing you. So I hope that I hope that everyone who's listening will will join us there. Awesome. Likewise we were very receptive looking forward to show off all of our artwork. And again, I think I think those that maybe have not been compensated while they're going to be really surprised so appreciate the conversation today too. It's always great to catch up with with Jeff and use. Well, Rob So thank you.