Waller Creek, Austin, Texas

Design Waller Creek selected the Turenscape + Lake|Flato team, including SvR, to be one of four finalists in a competition to design a new world-class urban open space corridor in Austin, Texas. Turenscape of Beijing (www.turenscape.com/english) is internationally recognized for its expertise in revitalizing urban waterfronts through innovative and ecological landscape design. Lake|Flato of San Antonio (www.lakeflato.com) is an AIA National Firm Award winner and its architecture has been lauded for its responsiveness to climate, landscape and the regional vernacular.

Building on past collaborations in international competitions, SvR and Turenscape have formed a strategic partnership to facilitate Turenscape’s work in the United States. For Waller Creek, SvR’s Nate Cormier is the Turenscape + Lake|Flato team’s project manager and SvR’s Peg Staeheli is the team’s green infrastructure design lead.

The competition’s first stage selected 9 lead design pairs from dozens of portfolios received. The second stage winnowed these 9 to 4 teams based on full team qualifications, management plans, and April interviews with a distinguished jury that includes Seattle’s Rich Haag. In the third, and final, stage these 4 teams have been directed to develop detailed design concepts for public display and presentations to the Jury in October of 2012.

The Waller Creek Conservancy has committed to raising $50-60 million for the implementation of the first phase of the winning proposal. We’re looking forward to an inspiring summer of fast-paced design workshops in Austin, Beijing, San Antonio and Seattle. You can learn more at www.wallercreek.org.

Turenscape + Lake|Flato team preparing for Stage 2 interview

At the same time, the welder, Mike from Wilcox Garage, placed the rafters on the covered overlook, which allowed us to assemble the composite panoramic below looking to the Olympics. We’re loving the way the overlook frames the borrowed landscape and can’t wait to see it when it’s complete. Definitely click through to see the image at full size.

Beacon Mountain Shelter. By Stephanie Bower, Architectural Illustration

As part of the Beacon Mountain project, three “Solar Shelters” will go online and begin creating energy on Wednesday at Jefferson Park.

Though the idea of having picnic shelters was always part of the project, funding wasn’t in place until Seattle Parks and Seattle City Light worked together to use a portion of funds from the Solar America Cities program from the U.S. Department of Energy to start the Community Solar program, which allows private rate-payers to invest in solar power on public lands within the City.

The program provides a low-cost way for the City to demonstrate their desire to find and use more sustainable sources of power and significantly lowers the barrier for private residents and businesses to “go solar,” which normally costs around $15,000 per household. Between now and 2020, the ratepayers who invested in the program should expect to get much of their initial capital investment returned to them through rebates on their electrical bills equal to the energy production at the solar shelter. After 2020, the energy from the shelters becomes part of the diversified portfolio of energy sources for the City.

Here’s a link to the King5 story. The project was also featured in Geekwire, the Seattle P-I, Sustainable Industries, the DJC and MyNorthwest.com

The current discussion on non-arterial speed in the Washington State legislature (SHB1217) would allow cities and counties the ability to set a 20mph limit on residential streets.

To put this in context, it would be good to look at the speed issue in the history of traffic laws in our country (for a comprehensive review, see Fighting Traffic by Peter Norton, 2008 MIT Press). Automobile/pedestrian accidents are not new; it is interesting to find that many corporations and the American Automobile Association were behind the shift to auto-prioritized traffic regulations.

It wasn’t always this way, in the early 1920s’ the Chicago Motor Club had a campaign to highlight accidents with posted signs “What’s Your Hurry?”. By 1922, Motor Magazine shifted this discussion by stating regulating speeds to “20-25 miles per hour under all circumstances” (emphasis mine) would “rob the automobile of much of its utility” at that time. Peter Norton writes even the traffic engineers of the mid-1920s “condemned the spatial inefficiency of automobiles and questioned the sense of spending large sums of money to give them room.” By 1926 Norton indicates that AAA jumped on this trend and indicated that motorists who struck children anywhere in the street outside the pedestrian crossing could not be classified among the “careless”. Today (2012) we have statistics from our own Harborview Medical Center that are clear, speed kills.

Vehicle Impact Speed & Pedestrian Injury Severity (via NHTSA)

All of us (I hope) want safe streets for all, even if just for the simple conditions that slower speed could bring when of backing out of our driveway or pulling away from the curb. We would all benefit from the improved legislation- you could say this is our RIGHT. The ‘State’ does not have a city or county user perspective and state laws should not prevent us from creating safe neighborhoods for all.

Please contact your legislator and let’s send this one through.

With all of the snow in the Puget Sound area, we de-iced some of the work that we had done as part of the Pedestrian Master Plan regarding snow and icy conditions and the pedestrian environment. We hope you enjoy and can glean some insights to share with others. There are seven topic areas: commercial and retail settings, frontages, placement of snow, corners, catch basins and drains, residential settings and ideas we suggest for further development.

Pedestrians to note:

Cars have difficulty stopping at crosswalks so be on alert in all directions and “give them space”.

Commercial and Retail Settings

Commercial and retail areas of the City are particularly attuned to maintaining activity on the sidewalks; providing access to retail offices and services; and providing access to transit.

Access to transit

Clearing for pedestrian travel

Frontages

Snow and ice conditions may vary widely within the City of Seattle.  Each property owner is responsible to maintain access along their properties. Access will vary according to the storm event.

Property maintaining frontage

Property not maintaining frontage

Neighbors not participating create inconsistencies. However, even a few feet of clearing width can facilitate safer travel.  Shovel snow to provide a minimum of 4 feet clear along the entire frontage and the full width of each entry.  Ideally 6 to 8 feet would be cleared however it is more important to maintain a consistent path of travel.

Clearing travel path first

Cleared exit/entrance to parking garage could be improved with additional curbside clearing in the street.

Placement of Snow

Place shoveled snow between the sidewalk and the curb; do not shovel the snow into the parking or curb lane as this may impede cars buses, delivery vehicles.

Snow dumped into loading/ unloading zone causes problems

Access for loading/ unloading needs to remain clear

Piles of shoveled snow are barrier for bus stop.

Clearing curb ramp zones of improperly dumped snow improves pedestrian crossings

Snow scooped by plows can create obstacles for pedestrian

Corners

It is important to clear the corners so pedestrians and drivers can discern the traveled edge. Ideally the entire corner would be cleared but as a minimum clear the curb ramps with a 5 foot long landing area back of the ramps

Corner undefined

Corner and ramp clear

Catch Basins and Drains

Keeping the drainage structures free of snow will facilitate drainage as the snow melts preventing ponding at the intersections

Ponding in the street

Residential

Homeowners, property managers and residents should maintain a path of travel along their frontage. Maintaining access will assist both you and your neighbors in traveling to stores, buses or just out for a walk in the snow.

Maintaining at least a shovel width will assist but ideally clear about 4 feet.

Snow also causes vertical obstacles as branches bend due to weight of snow

Place shoveled snow on the edge of the walk.  Do not place the snow in the curb zone as that would impede vehicles.  Residents that live on corners should clear the sidewalk at the corner so neighbors can see the edge of the street. Neighbors can also assist the City to by keeping drainage structures free of snow and debris.

Ideas Under Development

Snow Removal Patrols:

• Snow and Inclement Weather neighborhood helper patrol
• Downtown and Urban Village Assistance Teams
• Business Improvement Districts cost sharing for snow removal
• Metropolitan improvement districts
• Downtown Associations

Businesses/Residents will sign up to be in charge of their block or business district.  Every October the lead contact will receive 3 snow shovels; 1 flat shovel and three brooms and 6 green waste bags. They will arrange a fall block clean up and enlist or assign businesses to shovel snow in advance of an expected snow fall.

Other:

Arrange consistent leaf pick up day for downtown businesses and urban village commercial zones.

Isolated shoveling

Beacon Mountain at Jefferson Park is well under construction, with the rough grading approaching finished grade. A quick video from near the covered overlook gives some sense of the tremendous views that will be available when the site is finished.

Best viewed full screen.

h/t Vermont’s Local Motion blog