Editorial: Street strategy

Reducing motor vehicle traffic lanes to promote good health is a questionable strategy.

Local advocates of healthy lifestyles and streets that encourage pedestrian and bicycle usage and safety have come to the defense of new traffic strategies such as the one being considered for Kasold Drive between Seventh and 14th streets.

Planners are looking at reducing this stretch of the four-lane Kasold to two lanes and adding new bike lanes and an expanded multi-use path. Advocates assign many attributes to the plan. Reducing the lanes would actually ease traffic flow, they say, and adding a roundabout at Kasold and Harvard Road would slow traffic, making it safe for bicycles and motor vehicles to share the single lane of traffic around the circle. The overall goal is to encourage more people to travel to various destinations on foot or on a bicycle rather than in a car or truck — a step that would increase their physical health and well-being.

It’s an interesting theory, but it’s also a significant financial gamble for the city. What happens if the city pursues the new idea of narrower streets on Kasold and at other locations and then finds that pedestrian, bicycle and motor traffic doesn’t evolve in the way some advocates are hoping for?

Creating incentives for more people to walk and bike to their destinations is laudable, but perhaps not all that practical. For better or worse, our community hasn’t been designed in a way that encourages that trend. Where are the people who live on or near that stretch of Kasold going to walk or bike to? Some smaller commercial centers are located at Sixth Street and Bob Billings Parkway, but it’s some distance to the nearest grocery store.

Advocates harken back to a time when more children walked or biked to school, but that was when schools served smaller neighborhoods. Other factors, such as personal safety concerns or after-school activities, also enter into a parent’s decision whether to let a child walk or bike to school.

Then there’s Kansas weather, which isn’t always conducive to cycling and walking. Bike lanes and additional sidewalks might increase recreational uses of that stretch of Kasold but they seem unlikely to trigger significant reductions in motor vehicle traffic because more people are biking and walking to school, shopping and other everyday destinations.

Many motorists also continue to have safety concerns about roundabouts. Motorists are trainable, but they aren’t used to yielding the only traffic lane around a roundabout to a bicyclist, and many people still question whether pedestrians are safer crossing a street at a roundabout where traffic doesn’t routinely stop or at an intersection controlled by traffic signals or stop signs.

Increasing physical activity and decreasing our dependence on motor vehicles are great ideas, but narrowing city streets may not be the best way to promote that goal.