This
summer has been a disaster for the Orlando’s brewing urban renaissance. It started with Governor Rick Scott scuttling
funding for the University of Central Florida’s downtown campus, and it ended
with a dismal report from the Center for Disease Control that pegged Florida as
the most dangerous state for bicyclists.http://www.tbo.com/news/politics/floridas-bike-death-rate-highest-in-nation-20150829/ Its fatality rate of 0.57 per 100,000
population is more than double the national average of 0.23 per 100,000. To put this finding in perspective, in 1975
the national bicycle death rate was 0.41 per 100,000. Pedestrians and motorists also die at an
alarming rate in road rage addled Florida, and metropolitan Orlando is the flashpoint. Imagine Mad Max meets Mr. Toad’s
Wild Ride on steroids. It has the
nation’s highest Pedestrian Danger Index, and the thousands of residents living
in guarded, gated subdivisions on the urban periphery have a greater chance of
dying in a traffic
“accident” than being murdered in central Miami. At a
time when high bikescores and walkscores translate into investment, Orlando has
a brand it cannot afford.
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| Mr. Toads Wild Ride, Orlando's Special Hell |
Florida spawned the nation’s killing fields because its “transportation system”
was reduced to an exercise in road building.
The opening of Disney World in 1971 spurred the construction of a mass
of wide high-speed roads that fueled a repetitive
suburban pattern, which had the subtlety of a Stalinist Five-Year plan. In 1998 the Orange County Commission rejected
federal dollars to build a light rail system, ensuring the spread of a fragmented
mass of paved mediocrity designed to SUV dimensions. By 2000 Orlando was the most sprawl
threatened city in the nation. Its disjointed form resembled a mutant human body
with the elongated tentacles of a freakish octopus attached to its torso. A renegade group of traffic engineers at the
Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) realized their myopic system would
eventually implode, and they started pushing for reform.
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| In 2000, Florida dominated the list of most sprawl threatened cities |
Billy
Hattaway personified the effort. He had
a “conversion experience” in 1996 after spending 10 days examining
pedestrian-friendly infrastructure in West Coast cities. Frustrated by the failure of FDOT to evolve
from its 1970s mindset, he shifted to private practice in 2002. Over the next decade he earned accolades for
his expertise in designing "complete streets," which provide safe access for all ages and users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit
riders. A change in leadership brought
him back to FDOT in 2011 as a district secretary. He now leads a ramped up bicycle-pedestrian
safety initiative. The problem is Billy
Hattaway is not governor and, while change is fomenting, FDOT simply does not
have enough Billy Hattaways.
I
learned this lesson first hand. In 2013
the final plans for SunRail, Central Florida’s new commuter rail line, were
being completed. I oversaw a $25,000
grant from the Environmental Protection Agency that funded a team of Rollins
faculty and students to draft plans to improve pedestrian and bicycle access to
Winter Park’s new SunRail station. Since
Winter Park was forecasted to be the busiest stop, our project would offer a prototype
for the other 15 SunRail stops. We proposed establishing a SunTrail bicycle route on the railroad right-of-way
modeled after Cambridge, Massachusetts (it has the highest bikescore in the
nation) and link it to a system of complete streets and green streets.https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29405235/EPA%20Booklet.pdf If the plans were idealistic, they were also
grounded. A five-day trip to Portland
(sans automobiles) allowed faculty and students to examine the nation’s
bicycling capital, the only major city awarded Platinum standing by the League
of American Cyclists. Green streets,
cycle tracks, and bicycle boulevards were foreign to Orlando, and we marveled
as commuters zipped by at rush hour, running in packs and sounding like giant
swarms of bees. The
Orlando City Council was set to adopt a sustainability plan modeled on
Portland, so our faculty group was eager to share our work with FDOT planners.
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| Proposed SunRail Trail |
The
meeting was desultory at best. The idea
of narrowing traffic lanes, building cycle tracks, and reducing traffic speeds drew the response of a Stalinist planner encountering the profit motive:
NYET. The fact that the proposals were
drawn from historical precedent and Baldwin Park, a thriving New Urbanist
adjacent to Winter Park, mattered little.
“Baldwin Park is contrived,” one apparatchik informed us. “It is
contrived,” I replied (my family lives in Baldwin Park), “contrived for
pedestrians, bicyclists, and, good health.”
Hoping to find common ground, we shared our enlivening experience in
Portland. “Portland is not a good model
for Central Florida,” was the response. After a deep gulp, I broke the silence
and asked, “What is the model?” I’m still waiting for the answer.
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| Bike trail in "contrived" Baldwin Park |
Disappointed
but not deterred, we turned to the City of Winter Park. Rick Geller, an astute attorney
and former Orange County Planning Commissioner, took the lead. He was championing an effort to construct
Central Florida’s first cycle track on Cady Way Road, which would link the Cady
Way Bike Trail to Brookshire Elementary.
He regularly biked with his two daughters to Brookshire and knew the
dangers. After our trip to Portland, he
also knew a cycle track was the solution.
The PTA soon supported his initiative, but he was stymied after a report
from a consultant hired by Winter Park dismissed the project. Geller drafted a 34-page rebuttal.https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/433234ce-9fb0-4a38-bd6f-ec2a6484828f Thorough, rational, and data based, it made a
much more compelling case. He was shocked
when the bike coordinator for MetroPlan, the region’s transportation agency, claimed
the project was unnecessary because “there were no collisions between bikes and
cars on Cady Way Road during the past 10 years.”http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-bike-lanes-winter-park-20150119-story.html It was an obvious non sequitur. Cady Way carried
5,000 automobiles a day, which is 250 percent higher than the maximum traffic
volume for safe biking. Geller pressed his case and logic, and opposition gave
way.
There is a new mindset in Winter Park. The city is spending $500,000 to remove two traffic lanes on Denning Drive to create a buffered bicycle path. At the same time, Forest Michel, the greenway expert
who led the student design of the SunRail Trail, and Jill Hamilton-Buss, the director of Healthy Central Florida, have engaged Winter Park
officials to implement the SunRail Trail.http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/sunrail/os-sunrail-bikes-winter-park-20150630-story.html This
summer the Winter Park public works department constructed the Cady Way Cycle
Track. A local television station
featured Geller and his daughter biking to the first day of school. It was a hard won victory, and the pink tee
shirt Melissa Geller wore embraced the vision the FDOT planners lack. It had
one word, “Portland.”
Billy Hattaway was awarded the John Nolen Medal in 2015, and named a Public Official of the Year by Governing in 2014http://www.governing.com/poy/poy-billy-hattaway.html
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