Streets Aren't Smart.... People Are... A Short Series on Being Visionary

Part 1. A Brief Planning Assessment of an Urban Corridor

Introduction

As we have built our cities we find that sometimes we get things right and sometimes we don’t. And, sometimes we can’t even agree on what we got right… We aren’t perfect. So, lets talk about an urban corridor. For brevity I will call this corridor Sometimes the shortest distance between two points isn’t a straight line. This corridor happens to be located in Tallahassee FL and is a long curving street with a 40 mile per hour speed limit connecting Capital Circle NE to Apalachee Parkway (U.S. 27). The interesting twist to this road is that it is an extension of Park Avenue, an east/west corridor only with a different name, Doyle Conner Boulevard (a little shorter than the name I coined for it). The twist is Conner Blvd. takes a long curve so it can connect to Apalachee Parkway another east/west corridor. Like we are tying our roads into knots.

Conner Boulevard collects traffic for large scale land uses and deposits it to Capital Circle NE (loop road) or Apalachee Parkway a major corridor. Inadvertently it has also become a shortcut enabling traffic quicker access to Capital Circle NE. Another twist to this road is it seems to have the power to cause people to push harder on their gas pedal. I have personally seen where people have overshot the curves and banged into light standards, driven up embankments and when the sirens wail at 10:30 pm I know that something worse has happened, much much worse.

Doyle Conner Blvd. Tallahassee, FL via Google Maps

Land Use

Land uses along the corridor include a Federal Correctional Center, State Agricultural Facility, a storage yard for Leon County school buses, access to Lincoln High School and other schools as well as a regional park, residential neighborhood and apartment complex. The Google Map display shows that all of the land uses along the corridor are set away from the road. As you can see by the Google Map everything is set away from the roadway.

What Am I Going To Blog About?

The introduction gives a sense of what the road is like. This isn't a blog about safety, design, blame or any of that. This is a blog that thinks about our decisions from the past and promotes change for the future. I want to promote the concept of thinking about your city in 50 and 100 year time-periods. So we begin with an example: Doyle Conner Blvd. Discuss what it is, what it could have been and develop ideas that think within the context of the year 2060 or 2113.

Here is what will be coming next:

Three perspectives for this urban corridor:

1. Hindsight is 20/20 – This is the what if concept that considers the development of the roadway had it been planned as a segment of the original Park Avenue East.
2. Traffic Control Ideas – A concept of what this roadway might look like with a different set of traffic control systems or devices to calm traffic.
3. Land Use Ideas – How might this roadway operate with a different land use pattern and calmer traffic.

And a discussion about how to move a vision for the future forward.

DISCLAIMER: 

I am a Planner and a Writer. I have selected this blog as a method to share my ideas and concepts about urban form; I consider what is and focus on what might be. My primarily purpose is to initiate discussion about how cities grow and what each of us should be doing to help balance progress and a safe sustainable environment. Bottom line, don’t get worked up about the specifics, GET INVOLVED and share your ideas about your community.