If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll want a glass of milk.
When you give a mouse some milk, he'll want to share it with his mouse buddies— across
the street.
He'll want a crosswalk and pedestrian refuge.
And he'll want you to repave the street underneath that island.
The mouse will want you to inspect the soil and the underground utilities— because YOU'RE
DIGGING DOWN THERE ANYWAY!
Children need a safe way to walk to school.
This elementary school had an underground walkway.
They built it back in the Great Depression before any Interstate highways were built—
when all of the traffic went right past the school's front door.
After a kid was killed nearly 80 years ago, the city sent students underground.
That way, they could avoid the traffic zooming down, US-89/91/50.
Gill: "It had a direct connection to the sewer main.".
As you can imagine, that's something you don't want connected to your tunnel.
Public meeting: "We've heard that kids avoid it because it's smelly.".
Gill: "So it was not a very pleasant experience to walk through."
Public meeting: "The school had concerns because they couldn't see underneath.".
Legitimate because 30 years ago, somebody DID assault a student in the tunnel.
He went to prison.
So nowadays, with pretty much everybody taking the freeway (instead of that old state highway
in front of the school's front door), there really isn't a need for the tunnel.
So they tore it down.
When a skywalk is too expensive, how do you safely get pedestrians across the street?
Well, my last two videos are a hint: a raised median.
It unlocks a lot of really cool tools for bicyclists and pedestrians.
We're going to be a little less academic in this video.
Let's take a look at a real project, everything a public agency has to consider when installing
these cool tools.
Public meeting: "So we just want to introduce this...".
Sometimes you just can't build a raised median.
There's a lot of road underneath that sometimes needs a little attention first.
Public meeting: "It's not going to be...".
Which a lot of people care about.
Public meeting "Increase in noise...".
Because reconstructing a road offers a once in a generation opportunity to fix a lot of
problems.
Gill: "The asphalt is failing.
It was actually concrete under the asphalt and the cracks from the joints of the concrete
reflected up.".
Dave Gill is an engineer for the state of Utah.
It's his job to supervise the physical reconstruction of the state highway.
Gill: "We're just getting a lot of potholing and delamination of the asphalt."
But before you replace the pavement, it's good to fix the pipes under the road.
Water mains and sewers, but also drainage when it rains.
Gill: "Put in a new storm drain system and made a functioning storm drain system.
Some of our older cities, they have a deep gutter alongside the road that they used to
use for irrigation.".
The sort of thing when your parallel parking, you can get your tire caught into.
Which never happened to me /s.
Gill: "We've removed that and put in a regular storm gutter.
As we dug it up, we found a section that was like an old basically irrigation canal that
somebody had thrown a plow blades across the top and just paved over the top of it.".
Gill: "We removed the asphalt in the concrete and then dug down to there was like 30 inches
below the top surface.
It was going to take a while to do all the underground work.
So all the sewer water storm drain before we would be ready to pave.".
A real pain if you're trying to get in and out of your driveway.
Gill: "So to allow them access, we would build ramps across where we dug it out.".
Then time for a fresh new concrete.
Gill: "When we put down the pavement, we can't drive on it for 14 to 21 days.".
Keeping businesses and residents in the loop is just as important as any other step in
the construction process.
Gill: "Those people we started early, let them know it was coming and kind of kept them
apprised of the schedule so they knew.".
What the utility, soil and pavement finally in good shape, it's time to build the median.
And you have three different kinds to choose from: A vertical curb, a mountable curb, or
one that's flush with the roadway surface.
It's flat, so who needs it?
Gill: "One is nine inches above the surface of the road.".
Which also extends another half foot into the soil.
You're probably right to wonder why does the curb have to be 15 inches tall?
Why does it have to go so deep into the ground?
And part of that has to do with planting plants in the median.
The type of soil that you want in a garden, in a medium to, you know, lots of dead plant
life and biomass and just yummy things for the plants to eat.
[Biomass soil] is terrible to put underneath the concrete of the road.
You don't want the soil to decompose and shrink and become smaller and then the road on top
cracks.
So these medians are not just a wall keeping traffic out of the plants— It's also trying
to keep the plant soil out of the road soil.
Gill: "We maintain the roadway and let the municipality take care of the landscaping.
The city is going to have to go out and water the plants and weed.".
And engineers are picky about what the city plants.
Gill: "We do work with them to make sure that the landscaping they put in doesn't create
a hazard.
If they put trees that are going to grow to over a certain size, we would have to say
'no.'
If they wanted to put huge boulders out there, we would say 'no.'"
Besides being pretty, all those flowers, bushes, and trees can get drivers to slow down a little
bit.
But all those plants get thirsty.
Gill: "We had to put it in locations where we keep water, the shrubs and the trees.".
Digging a fifteen-inch curb and trenching for pipes can really "Swiss cheese" a perfectly
good street.
So if you're just adding a median not completely rebuilding the road, a mountable media might
be a better choice.
Gill: "The other is an eight inch.
It's actually just rebarred into... whatever the pavement surface is."
These curbs install right on top of the street, but there's pavement underneath so you can't
grow any plants.
Gill: "Usually we just do a hardscape, a stamped colored concrete, or a concrete flatwork—
just so that there is no maintenance, no water, no actual soil out there.".
Which can make upkeep a breeze.
Gill: "It's easier to to maintain because it's less roadway.".
But either type of curb starts to have problems in the wintertime.
Gill: "Our snowplow drivers hate them because they have to drive around them.
Our plowblades catch on the median.
We try and mark them well, but you can only put up a sign so many times before it keeps
getting taken down and people cut the corner to tight.".
This is called a "plowable end"— named exactly what you would think it would be for.
It's for snow plows.
You think about it when the plow driver is driving in the middle of winter in the snow
is up a foot high, they're not going to see this curb.
And so I gives the snow plow something smooth to go up onto rather than just WHAM... hitting
the edge of the curb and messing the plow up.
But it also helps you out, too, if you aren't paying as close attention as you should be
and you start drifting toward the left, toward the median a little bit— your left tire
can go up on this thing and it gives you a chance to be able to drive off of it rather
than just totally destroying your suspension.
Gill: "People do knock the sign down and then either get high centered to drive away.".
Medians do a good job blocking cars, but they also block emergency vehicles.
You can put in a shorter mountable curb, which discourages people from driving over it while
still allowing emergency vehicles to cross.
Gill: "A mountable one that's like about seven inches.
Six or seven inches above the pavement.
But it's not as abrupt.
It's not quite as tall and it has more of a taper on it.
It's still abrupt enough that in your little Prius that you wouldn't want to do it" (laughing).
But now you have a beautiful new street with a median in place.
It's time to start adding the toys.
Normally, when you cross a big street like this, you have to worry about 60, 70, 80 feet
of traffic and looking both directions.
A nice thing with the median as I just have to watch one direction at a time.
And if I don't get all the way across in time, I could stop here in the middle for refuge.
These can include traffic signals like this example or a pedestrian hybrid beacon like
this one in Arizona.
Or pedestrians can push a button which activates yellow lights in the median.
The Federal Highway Administration recommends refuge islands on all the faster streets with
moderate to high traffic— with a nice wide median.
Eight feet wide, if you can, about four feet is the absolute minimum.
Otherwise, it's too skinny to do any good.
(Opera pedestrian freakout).
There should also be enough room for lighting, which makes crosswalks without a traffic signal
easier to spot at night.
When cities build a refuge of the right way, crosswalks become significantly safer.
There's also a cool variation where the sidewalk sort of jogs over, which really makes a pedestrian
stop and think which way to look before stepping into traffic.
That's helps people cross where you want them to cross.
Medians can have fencing to stop people from crossing in places you don't want them to.
Force them to cross at a crosswalk or to use a skywalk.
But back to the Utah project.
On the streets that weren't quite so busy, they installed curb extensions.
Sometimes people nickname them "bulb outs" because from above it looks kind of like a
light bulb.
The area where people park— you really don't need the curb to continue all the way to the
main street there.
So they bulb around it and that makes a shorter crosswalk.
This street is about 48 feet to cross normally.
But the bulb that shrinks that down to about 40 feet.
Yeah, it's only eight feet, but that's still a shorter crosswalk.
Less time people are in the road.
Bicyclists— they get the coolest tool of all!
Gill: "Along 500 West [Street], we've got a median in the road that doesn't allow cars
to make left hand turns.
In the middle of the road where the yellow line would be, we actually have two median
curbs that are about six to eight feet apart that's defined bicycle lane.".
The city has two bicycle priority's streets.
You ride your bike right down the middle of the road.
This special traffic signal helps you cross the busy street.
There's a sensor so when a bicycle rolls up, it can turn the light green— a special green.
It even has a little bicycle icon.
And that allows them to cross the street without having to stop and push any buttons.
Instead, this radar sensor can detect when a bicycle rolls up, automatically.
People on bicycles don't want to get off their bicycle to push the button.
And once they're across, it turns red and the traffic resumes.
It's a fun toy and it's just for bicycles.
People driving in cars still have to turn right because the gap in the raised median
is intentionally only wide enough for bikes.
And this kind of a project is a good time to install bicycle lanes.
Buffered bicycle lanes, which actually give a few feet of a gap between the cars and the
bikes.
But if you want a serious buffered bicycle lane, you have to go around the corner and
look at a city median project that happened simultaneously.
About three years ago as a graduating graduate student, I made a presentation to my classmates
about a problem on this street, a two way turn lane that allowed people to turn left
or cross the street any place they wanted.
The problem is this street is far too busy to allow people to do that.
While the city was fixing the middle of the street with a raised median, they also took
an outside "thru" lane, added another median (which separates travel in the same direction)
and used it for bicycles.
Noah: "I didn't know that.
That's going to changed it, though.".
This is Noah.
I ran into him while he was walking home from work.
So I asked him about the buffered bike lane.
Noah: "It's good.
It's nice— when I do use it.
I tend to ride on the sidewalk."
Research from Portland State University shows bicyclists feels safer in this type of a lane,
which is no surprise.
Noah: "Actually, that is the first time I've seen something like that.".
Pedestrians found their interaction with bicyclists a little bit confusing when they needed to
cross the lane.
Motorists generally felt safer with bicyclists being off in their own space.
But did attribute delay to the bicycle lane.
And that's the cost.
Taking that lane away from a car and giving it to a bicyclist.
Three lanes to two, would it be worth it?
Noah: "Yes, that would be worth it.".
Two lanes to one?
"No." (laughing) "Two to one is not worth it.".
On the next video— I'm not going to lie.
I was kind of horrified.
I mean, without signs telling you to cross over to the wrong side of the street, how
would you know?
(Captioning made possible by 184 generous contributors to Road Guy Rob on Patreon.
Thank you!)