By David Crossley

A wonderful example of the way “common sense” responses to problems can fail us is unfolding now in the Upper Kirby District. There is a strong movement afoot to re-stripe West Alabama for four auto lanes rather than the three auto lanes and a bike lane we have now.

Aside from the hysterical “We hate people who ride bicycles and don’t want them in our neighborhood” argument, the one that’s causing most folks to think going to four lanes is a good idea is that it will reduce congestion, allow twice the throughput, and help get us through the terrible years that are about to come when all the massive new roadwork in the area gets started.

I don’t hear anyone talking about safety, so I’ll just start there: four-lane streets can have roughly twice as many accidents as three-lane streets, unless the three-lane street also has a median, in which case the four-lane street can be roughly four times as dangerous.

Setting safety aside, as we also do every time we widen a street (there is a tight correlation between the width of a street and the number of accidents), let’s address throughput, the number of cars and trucks who pass through a given place each day.

Several studies show that daily throughput is generally unchanged between the four-lane and three-lane cross sections, although in some instances there have been slight decreases in average speed in three-lane situations – and in others throughput has actually increased, leading at least one researcher to note that “a three-lane cross section could be considered a lower cost alternative to widening.”

Studies also show that increased driveway frequency raises accident frequency, so we can be certain that the Alabama driveways for Whole Foods and Borders are not only causing congestion and road rage, but they’re actually causing accidents as well. That each of these suburban shopping centers has a side street entrance just a few yards away has so far escaped the notice of those wishing to increase traffic speed at the intersection. One could argue that the biggest cause of congestion at the corner (other than the stoplight, which is the major culprit, almost always) is those two driveways.

Why anyone involved with the stores along there, or people who live in the neighborhood, would even want to increase speeds along Alabama is a mystery to me, since the same number of cars will pass through the area on a daily basis. It would seem axiomatic that anyone who wants to go faster through there has no interest in “there,” but is only passing through.

Finally, studies appear to support the conclusion that pedestrians, bicyclists, and adjacent landowners typically prefer the corridor environment of a three-lane cross section rather than a four-lane undivided roadway. The sometimes slower and more consistent speeds produced are more desirable to all three groups. Indeed, the only people not to benefit in this configuration are those who want everyone else to get out of their way and who might be slowed down anywhere from 1 to 4 miles per hour as they pass through our neighborhood. Not to diminish the importance of these selfish and often vicious sub-humans, on whom most road and highway policy is based.

Going to four lanes will greatly increase the danger to everyone, including pedestrians, bicyclists (who will still use the street, as is their right), and motorists, and will accomplish nothing whatsoever in terms of the number of cars that use the facility each day. So what’s the point?

Normally, in public works projects, the point is to give money to contractors and engineers who support candidates for election. This is why such projects are rarely simple, as this one would be. But because going out and painting new stripes on the street (and probably leaving the old ones too, just for fun) is not a very big job as these things go, it’s a little difficult to see who would actually benefit from changing to four lanes.

Alabama and Richmond are expected to pick up all the suburban overflow that’s going to come when the brilliant new Westpark toll road opens and dumps all the cars into the general area, well short of their downtown destinations, and the Highway 59 chaos gets worse for a couple of years. Alabama is being proposed as the street for HOV purposes, which will include buses, presumably, and they won’t fit comfortably on the four-lane plan, so one could reasonably expect that a proposal will soon be coming forward to widen Alabama, just as one is coming forward to removed the esplanade on Richmond to add another lane.

So it goes as the physical effects of suburban sprawl, which had been largely confined to the outer reaches, spread inward in their relentless destruction of the urban fabric.