When a street is not a road.

My year and a half in Afghanistan working under the US Air Force confronted me with a new acronym almost every day.  One of the bases for which I wrote a comprehensive plan required a “Glossary of Acronyms” in order to sort them all out, ballooning to several pages in length.  It was exhausting.

And then there are the words made up on the spot.

Generally speaking, I leave neologisms to the likes of Buckminster Fuller.  And even though acronyms don’t qualify as newly minted words, they can serve largely the same semantic function.  It’s hard not to scan the cultural forces that help to elicit both acronyms and neologisms with a certain level of amusement.  I’ll admit that I’ve deployed a new word from my artillery from time to time.  (I’d like to think I coined the term “popera” long before it achieved musical relevancy, but no one will see me phoning my lawyer.) Even though the output of fabricated labels within the discipline of urban studies pales in comparison to the Department of Defense, I still find that I’m rarely in the up-and-up when it comes to new trends or the modish terms to describe them.

Which brings us to the stroad.  I wasn’t aware of what a stroad was until just a few months ago.  Semantically, it seems just as inaccurate as the façadectomy that I have referenced a few times in the past.  After all, “stroad” is a portmanteau of “street” and “road”, used to characterize an arterial that seems to share features of both, but also nullifies their intrinsic advantages.  But aren’t “street” and “road” synonymous?  According to a recent City Lab article, Chuck Marohn, a “recovering traffic engineer”, coined the term “stroad” to describe any right-of-way that “moves cars at speeds too slow to get around efficiently but too fast to support productive private sector development”.  Therefore, a stroad tries to achieve the most desirable characteristics of both roads (for their ability to move vehicular traffic quickly) and streets (for their ability to link neighborhood features in an aesthetic manner that remains safe and appealing for all users).  It fails on both counts. According to Marohn, “anytime you are traveling between 30 and 50 miles per hour [as is typically characteristic of a stroad], you are basically in an area that is too slow to be efficient yet too fast to provide a framework for capturing a productive rate of return.”  Marohn has created a video through his nonprofit Strong Towns that offers a visualization of an archetypal stroad. 

My long-repressed English major has turned me into an insufferable semantic nitpicker.  Here I criticize Marohn for placing two words—street and road—into tidy, discrete semantic boxes…two words that for most people are fungible.  Beyond that, I need to chill out, because Marohn’s neologism is effective in pretty much every other sense.  Regardless of whether or not a stroad blends a street and a road, as anyone else would define it, it still feels like a hybrid of two types of right-of-way.  Perhaps it cold be called an arterial and a collector (a “collecterial”?), but then those two terms are fully entrenched in the lingo of transportation engineers.

“Stroad” really conveys another key point.  It’s one ugly sounding word—clipped, aggressive and vulgar.  It almost sounds like a blend of stoat and toad, two largely unloved animals.  And, in my first real-life encounter with a stroad (at least at a point when I knew what the word meant), the first thing that occurred to me was the unattractiveness of the landscape.  Here it is:

I’m looking eastward down Michigan Avenue, in the Great Lake State’s capital of Lansing.  And it’s obvious that this major street, which connects downtown Lansing to the campus of Michigan State University in nearby East Lansing, has enjoyed a number of investments that attempt to make it a more attractive environment for pedestrians.  Notice the vintage lamps hugging the curbs.  Another angle reveals some “bulb out” sidewalk designs intended to lower the section of the street necessary for walkers to cross at a given crosswalk, as seen below:

And, to be fair, quite a few of the structures on the north side of the street (to the left in these photos) date from a time period when most buildings directly addressed the sidewalk.   But the side on which I was standing—the south side—shows the fierce competition that those handsome old two-story buildings must face.

To be fair, real estate speculators have caught on to the notion that this is a redeveloping area, and someone is trying to market this corner parcel to capitalize on what is ostensibly an emerging district for young professionals.

I wish this developer the best of luck.  He or she may very well succeed.  After all, just a half-block to the west, on the north side of the street, sits the Cooley Law School Stadium, an apparent recent addition that has prompted certain civic boosters to brand this stretch of Michigan Avenue as the “Stadium District”.

And on the otherwise desolate south side of the street, another obviously recent mixed-use development sits just a little further to the west, ostensibly capitalizing on the Stadium District name.

And, another block to the west, an old industrial building has benefited from a repurposing into a mixed-use facility with restaurants on the first floor.

Perhaps Michigan Avenue will come together wonderfully as a corridor with densely interwoven different uses.  It doesn’t hurt to be optimistic.  After all, this stroad terminates just a few blocks further to the east, at the Michigan State Capitol. 

The elongated dome of the Capitol is visible in the distance.  So this Stadium District is just a football toss away from Lansing’s downtown and the center of Michigan’s government.  (But, incidentally, not the Ingham County seat.  Lansing is among the only state capitals that is not also the center of government for its respective county.)  But compare Michigan Avenue to another, smaller commercial thoroughfare in central Lansing:

The above pictures reveal the streetscape for Washington Square, a street perpendicular to Michigan Avenue that runs just a block east of the capitol.  Both roads are visible on the map below:

On Washington Square, cars can still get where they need to be, but never while careening at 50 miles per hour.  The abundance of on-street parking—most of it occupied on a lazy Saturday afternoon—integrates peaceably with the copious sidewalk-oriented buildings, resulting in an environment that is far more likely to foster higher concentrations of pedestrians.  Compare once more with Michigan Avenue just a few blocks away:

Churck Marohn recognizes that stroads often boast superlative investment.  But to what end?  The sidewalk on the right looks great, with decorative brick pavers, street trees, and wrought iron gates.  But the gaps between all the buildings on the right suggest that most landowners in this area still prefer setting aside plenty of space for off-street parking. Meanwhile, on the left, abutting the Cooley Law School Stadium, is another big parking lot.

And since parking lots are not exactly a high-intensity land use, chances are the land values along Michigan Avenue are significantly lower than Washington Square.  Admittedly, Washington Square is in the heart of downtown, but Michigan Avenue’s effort to assert itself as a competing Uptown district isn’t bearing the same fruit.

On his stroad video, Marohn asserts, “Parking lots don’t employ anyone, and parking lots don’t pay a lot of taxes, so this environment becomes very low-yielding.”  Frankly, it’s amazing that this stroad has even achieved what we see now.   But the investment to get here has been formidable, and it’s hard to imagine that the buildings that flank this seven-lane arterial will ever host sufficient density to make it hot real estate that can attract college students away from the much better, stroad-less street network in MSU’s hometown of East Lansing.  The only conceivable way to scale down this stretch of Michigan Avenue would be to turn it into a full-fledged street—or at least Marohn’s definition of a street—by giving it a road diet that invites the superfluous lanes to accommodate bicyclists, pedestrians, carefully deployed greenery, or mass transit stops.  But that, again, would require more infrastructural investment—the exact sort of Pyrrhic victory that has borne so many stroads in the first place.  By this point, that sort of money would go to better use in a complete urban dictionary.  Or a guide to the US Air Force acronyms.

A time of the signs.

It should go without saying that a clear indicator of an effective sign is its ability to communicate its intended message.  Whether the sign’s intent is to advertise, to inform, or to admonish, it loses most of its power if its capacity to denote doesn’t come easily or quickly (and quickly nearly always translates to easily).  This condition may be true in most milieus, but it’s particularly relevant among roadside signage.  After all, at least in the US, most people approach roadways from the perspective of a motorized vehicle, meaning they are moving across the landscape quickly enough that small objects pass by with little time to absorb them.  So those signs have to be clear…otherwise how can they get their point across?

At a fundamental level, there’s nothing wrong with this unusual sign in Southfield, MI, a large, busy suburb of Detroit with definitive Edge City characteristics.

Although signs restricting motorists from turning during certain hours are hardly commonplace, they certainly aren’t unheard of.  Obviously, a succession of cars waiting to make a left turn at a busy intersection can create a logjam, deteriorating the Level of Service of any busy arterial, especially during peak travel times.  But look at the hours listed on this particular sign.

Contrary to our expectations, this isn’t a morning restriction.  Left turns are off limits here from 6:00a all the way until midnight—a whopping 18 hours.  Only in the middle of the night (or early morning), from 12:01a to 5:59a, are vehicles permitted to turn on red.

It probably makes sense: the traffic volume here on Telegraph Road, just south of W. Twelve Mile Road, is so intense that cars seeking to turn left probably should have to wait, at least through most of the day.  But how likely is it that the human eye and brain will interpret this correctly the first time around, even when stopped at the light?  After all, both the beginning and ending restriction times are AM.  Most signs advertising use restrictions only regulate for brief intervals; not three-quarters of the day. Even if a driver stops here for quite some time, the brain is likely to require time to process the fact that this restriction completely encompasses the PM hours. And for those who pass by quickly, then plunge ahead, will they necessarily interpret the information on this sign accurately?  This sign’s unconventional regulation could make it an easy locus for law enforcement to “catch” motorists in a moving violation. (“But officer, I thought the sign said…”)

Truth is, this restriction is nothing more than a refinement of a Michigan left, a fairly common traffic management practice throughout urban areas in the Wolverine State—but pretty rare just about everywhere else.  This tactic, in which a motorist makes a right and then a carefully controlled U-turn (often regulated by stop lights as in the Southfield example above), no doubt reduces chances of gridlock induced by a left-turn lane, albeit by diverting vehicles across a more convoluted path.  Michigan’s famously broad thoroughfares, coupled with generous medians, make the Michigan left superlative at mitigating against the hazard of motorists demurringly seeking a left turn across a broad intersection.  But for the unfamiliar (i.e., the non-Michiganders) the approach confuses and annoys, because it seems so counter-intuitive.  And a road sign with bizarre restrictions only amplifies this confusion.

In MDOT’s defense, the Michigan left is catching on: Indiana installed one at a busy intersection a few years ago (at the border of Indianapolis and the suburb Fishers), and southwestern DOTs have begun adopting them.  Meanwhile, my former home of New Orleans is perhaps even more enamored with wide medians than Detroit (though they call them “neutral grounds” down there), and the city has long embraced a variant on Michigan, in that motorists usually must make a U-turn at a later point just beyond the intersection, rather than an immediate left turn at the convergence of the two streets.  But the approach involves much more elaborate signage with the Michigan left in metro Detroit, akin to this graphic.

Will the creeping dissemination of the Michigan left across other parts of the country eventually make the “6am to 12am” time frame easier to interpret?  Probably not, unless signage featuring this interval becomes commonplace.  And why should it?  Wouldn’t it have been more straightforward simply to say “left turns allowed – 12am to 6am only”?  Or to depict the interval through military time?  But would American civilians ever catch on to the 24-hour approach, common throughout most of the world?  Yeah, that’s about as likely as switching to the metric system—or surrendering our sovereignty to France.  Which pretty much amount to the same thing.

A signal to retreat to the suburbs? Too late.

Scattered throughout various locations throughout the City of Detroit, one is likely to run into this sign.

It may be unusual in almost any other urban area, but not the Motor City.  In due time, the city could end up removing this traffic light at the intersection of Peterboro Street and Second Avenue altogether.  It stands just a little over a mile from Campus Martius Park, this absolute center of downtown.  But why would the City’s Department of Public Works consider removing a traffic light in an area so close to highest concentration of jobs and workers?

It’s not rocket science.  This intersection no longer endures the volume of traffic to justify a stoplight.  Or, at least, the City is pretty sure it doesn’t.  Curbed Detroit featured an article on this assessment much earlier in the year.  In many regards, it’s not too surprising, given the hierarchical importance of these two streets.  Second Avenue would most likely qualify as a collector, an intermediate street that does not provide the length or support the volume of vehicles that a more prominent arterial would (such as Woodward Avenue).  Meanwhile, Peterboro Street is little more than a local road, just four blocks in length and not intended to handle any major traffic beyond access to residential quarters.  The Google Map below better demonstrates this relationship.

 
Detroiters know that Second Avenue is hardly a street on par with Woodward, just three blocks to the east; it terminates just a few blocks to the south, at Temple Street and Cass Park.  And Peterboro, the cross street, is only four blocks long.  Considering the built environment in the area today, its hard to conceive of a time when the density of commerce and vehicles was ever enough to warrant a stoplight here.  But, in many regards, that is the marvel of Detroit.  Here’s a clearer view of the intersection looking northward down Second.

One could make excuses for the general feeling of emptiness, considering that I took these pictures in the late afternoon on a Saturday.  But judging from the absence of major buildings flanking either side of Second Avenue, is there any reason to believe these lanes (all one-way northbound) are ever congested?

Historically, one of Americans’ favorite gripes about their respective cities is the snarling traffic problem, indicative of streets that no longer have the capacity to handle the vehicles that pass through.  However, even the pro-car stalwarts (and the Motor City has more than its share) would have to argue that Detroit’s roads suffer the opposite capacity issue.  Simply put, these streets don’t handle nearly the magnitude of traffic for which their designers originally anticipated and intended.

Both Michigan DOT and Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) offer reports on Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) counts.  SEMCOG, with a smaller geographic focus, also seems to offer much greater detail in its AADT research.  For example, this table provides the AADT for Peterboro Street west of Second Avenue, part of the intersection featured in the above photographs.  At 380, the number doesn’t seem that high even without a comparative context.  After all, this is only a mile from the absolute center of Detroit, and much less from what would generally pass at Detroit’s downtown.  Compare it with the AADT of other street segments of this very minor street and its clear that only two intersections involving Peterboro can even expect 1,000 cars to pass by in a 24-hour period.

But it gets worse.  Compare this with an intersection between a collector and an arterial a quarter-mile closer to downtown, for example:

This photo looks eastward on Temple Street at the point where Second Avenue terminates, visible on the left, with the mammoth Masonic Temple immediately behind it.  Just in the distance are two more intersections with stoplights.  The purple circles in the map below indicate the locations of stoplights on Temple.

It amounts to one of the most excessive traffic light schemes I’ve seen in any major city center.  Because the two segments of Second Avenue are non-contiguous, they cannot share a stoplight.  However, in this instance, not only is the traffic volume insufficiently heavy to demand stoplights, but the flow of the traffic further weakens the need.  In the photo below, I’m standing between the two intersections (represented by the purple circles to the left and center on the map), looking eastward.

This stoplight regulates traffic on a segment of Second Avenue that is just one block long and only one-way northbound.  Thus, the light exists only for vehicles leaving Second Avenue onto Temple Street; cars along Temple can't do anything.  Why isn’t a stop sign sufficient?

The other intersection (the farthest purple circle on the left) is even more unnecessary.  

The stoplight directs traffic between Temple and Second, but yet again, Second is a one-way northbound street.  Thus, a stoplight exists only for vehicles leaving Temple to turn onto Second; no cars can legally travel the other direction.  Since westbound cars on Temple only need to turn right to enter onto Second, they would not need traffic regulation under any circumstances.  The stoplight only regulates cars turning left—no other purpose.  If these were high-traffic streets, some other form of management might be useful.  But remember what Second Avenue looks like:

Not just a yawning chasm of unused pavement, but a one-way yawning chasm.

I will concede that the Masonic Temple, as a performing arts venue and meeting space, can bring reasonable crowds when a show or indoor festival is in town.

But in a city with numerous magnificent theaters, the Masonic Temple doesn’t really dominate the scene.  It rarely hosts an event more than three nights a week, and while these can get crowded, does a street really need stoplights for just a few hours here and there?  After all, whether urban, suburban, or rural, one typically expects at least a little bit of traffic bottlenecking when a major show lets out.

I’m hardly an advocate for high-speed traffic flow as an easy remedy, especially in urban settings where numerous pedestrians could be present.  But the conditions for motorists along this stretch of Temple Street are almost comparable to waiting in line for a ride at Disneyworld.  Cars along Temple Street lurch only 100 feet from one stop light to the next, while waiting for absolutely nothing.  The lights aren’t timed to expedite flow, so it is common for a car to stop at all three intersections represented by the purple circles.  Worst of all: these lights are not under any study for removal…yet.

This predicament may seem minor in a city that has lost over two-thirds of its population since its peak (and is continuing to hemorrhage in most neighborhoods), but it is an inevitable consequence.  The lower east side of Detroit, home to some neighborhoods that have lost over 90% of the population from the 1950 peak, has none of these “removal” signs.  No decommissioned stoplights planned, although the condition of stopping at lights for no reason is ubiquitous on that side of town.

As a result, the fact that the Department of Public Works’ Traffic Engineering Division is assessing the possibility of removing traffic lights seems like lemonade out of lemons.  Not only is it good for people getting around by car in the Motor City, who won’t suffer the inefficiency of stopping at lights that no longer need to exist (a Pareto optimality under just about any argument that comes to mind).  The win-win resolution prescribed here may seem out-of-touch with the broader concerns of job loss and concentrated poverty, but any bankrupt city that needs to divest of some of its most fulsome assets (and their associated operational costs) will inevitably have to confront the phenomenon of traffic management in an environment that no longer handles much traffic.  Even if the City sells its tri-color portfolio to fast-growing metros that need them, it will probably only amount to a drop in the bucket when it comes to reducing some of the catastrophic debt.  But this strategy is both relatively easy to implement and unlikely to generate the sort of controversy that one might expect from, say, stripping the Detroit Institute of Art of its collection.  One final aspiration: that the Department devises a tactic so that a single “study for removal” doesn’t cost more than the value of the intersection’s stoplights themselves.

Movable, misunderstood apparitions.

In certain subcultures, it’s become a meme.  But it took me a little while to catch on. Only after driving past this curiosity for three consecutive days did I realize what it was.  It’s not exactly showy, but that’s the point.  Look slightly to the left of the center of this photo, and it should be clear what I’m referring to. 

Since it really doesn’t jump out, a different angle and better weather might help.

Yes, it’s a fairly standard ten-speed, only painted all in white.  It’s a ghost bike—a spartan memorial to someone who was killed or severely injured while bicycling. According to the Ghost Bikes nonprofit site, St. Louis christened the first ghost bikes back in 2003, but it has spread to hundreds of locations all across the world, nearly always as a tribute to someone struck by a car.  Usually the accident took place at or near the location where the memorial stands, and frequently the dedicators deploy an already damaged bike, to intensify the mangled effect of the collision.  Sometimes the installers remove the tubes from of the tires in order to deter theft.  In this Detroit example, the bike leans against a traffic sign on Grand River Avenue and Temple Street, right in front of the Motor City Casino.

As is the case with many ghost bikes, other passers-by have inserted flowers and scribbled messages onto the enamel.

And, not surprisingly, I’m not the first to capture this discovery.  One of the more prominent local urban advocacy websites seems to have taken notice just a day or two after the installation.  Hub of Detroit created the memorial to honor Hal Williams, who died last month following a hit-and-run collision, purportedly along the same segment of Grand River Avenue as the site of this memorial.  Incidentally, a Detroit City Councilman’s son was hit on his bike at this exact intersection in 2010.  Though the councilman’s son did not sustain life-threatening injuries (not doubt abetted by the solicitude of the driver, who stopped that time around), the fact that multiple accidents have taken place along this stretch of Grand River prompts one to question the overall safety level for bicycles at this part of town, or this intersection in particular.

Even a Google Maps view suggests that this intersection is a doozie.

It’s essentially three-way, except that the bi-directional John C Lodge Service Drive straddles both sides of a below-grade State Highway 10 (M-10), which operates as a limited-access freeway throughout the Detroit city limits.  And Temple Street is particularly confusing: contrary to the appearance on the map, the motorists traveling eastbound from the west side of M-10 can fully cross, but those on the west side of Temple heading eastward (toward the Motor City Casino) cannot completely traverse this intersection.  A good portion of the traffic uses this intersection as ingress or egress from M-10 (Lodge Freeway), and an additional service ramp loops across (parallel to Temple Street) cutting through the intersection in an opposite flow that one would expect (the left side of the road) in order to continue access on the south side of the portion of Temple separated by a median.  If this description seems baffling, one can imagine how it would appear to any bicyclist or motorist unfamiliar with the intersection.  The photo below at least provides a hint of the sort of “Charlie Foxtrot” situation that this intersection inflicts upon its users.

Ghost bikes could serve as a sobering reminder to passers-by of the risks that bicyclists assume when maneuvering in urban environments with fast-moving automobile traffic.  They could prove particularly effective in reminding motorists to proceed with caution in already complicated, high-traffic intersections like Temple and Grand River.  But unfortunately my inner grammarian impels me to use epistemic modal verbs in the previous two sentences, because I don’t yet think ghost bikes are achieving their goal.  They could someday.  But if a website exists to track them, they clearly aren’t that widespread.

Sure, we don’t have nearly as many bicyclist fatalities as we do of motorists; after all, not very many people ride bicycles in the US.  But one far bigger hindrance to the visibility and viability of ghost bikes is that they rarely survive long.  Floyd Reeser of Bike Saviours, a nonprofit community bicycle education center in Tempe, observed that ghost bikes rarely last more than a week, while officials in the Arizona city were finalizing a measure limiting the placement of roadside memorials in the public right of way to 90 days following a fatal accident.  Tempe officials agreed in June to work on a relocation of two ghost bikes, divorcing them from the accident sites but preserving their commemorative integrity.  Meanwhile, the New York City Sanitation Department announced that the “eyesores” had to come down after receiving numerous complaints about the ghost bikes, though the department is giving families of loved ones a 30-day grace period—25 days more than typical abandoned and derelict bikes receive. For those who think this callousness is stereotypically American, the City Council recently ordered a family to remove a ghost bike in Hackney, UK.  And a ghost bike just north of Dupont Circle in Washington DC managed to survive a year as a tribute to a young woman hit by a garbage truck in 2008.  This particular episode amplifies the poignancy of ghost bikes for me.  I remember this accident, since I biked across the exact same intersection and through the often-terrifying Circle every day on my way to work in Georgetown that year. 

These interventions are among the more courteous.  Most cities remove the ghost bikes with little to no notice.  The only reason this might attract greater attention is because the public sector usually accords another grassroots memorial much greater respect.  We’ve all seen wooden crosses or miniature gravestones along the road to commemorate a life lost in an automobile accident.  Ghost bikes are little more than a semantic subset, specifically indentifying individuals killed while bicycling.  But to remove a wooden cross—or even to complain about it—borders on blasphemy, while petitioners routinely campaign for the successful removal of ghost bikes.  What’s the difference?

I attribute it to several factors.  Obviously bicycles are much larger, and they can legitimately impede a right-of-way in a manner that few roadside graves ever will.  Ghost bikes are far more likely to inhabit urban settings, where the higher population density engenders a higher propensity toward complaints.  But neither of these excuses is entirely fair to ghost bikes, since other memorial graves can be large and ostentatious; meanwhile, ghost bikes could just as easily commemorate an accident in a rural setting.

My suspicion is that the multitude of implied uses to bicycles serves as a liability to the proliferation of ghost bikes.  Obviously the most common function of a bike is as a means of transportation.  So when one remains planted at one site for weeks or months at a time, the public often draws the conclusion that it is abandoned, regardless of an alabaster coating.  Meanwhile, grave markers serve a discrete semiotic purpose: to memorialize—nothing else that I’m aware of.  We see a wooden cross or a flower-embellished placard along the road and we know exactly what it means.  No one has the gall to refer to them as “eyesores” because they fundamentally cannot become abandoned, no matter how aged and deteriorated they might be.

The connotations to a long-parked bicycle are never quite so clear, and ghost bikes suffer as a result.  Since they’re a relatively new phenomenon, maybe time will grant them the same respect that wooden roadside graves enjoy. But the need for widespread public education on ghost bikes references something far more critical: a superior public understanding of how vehicles and bicycles can safely co-exist on roads both urban and rural.

Ramping up the capacity of a rural highway—but without the ramps.

One of the biggest yet quietest challenges in managing capital improvement projects is maintaining a basic level of functionality during major upgrades.  My suspicion is that the implementation of major capital improvements is usually quiet because—more often than not—these upgrades take place with few disruptions.  Think about it: the basic etymology of “infrastructure” reveals how rarely we are conscious of its existence.  The Latin infra means “under”, denoting “below” in terms of location and connoting the same in terms of hierarchical prominence.  We don’t notice it unless it isn’t running as it should.  And various branches of government—municipal public works departments or state departments of transportation—are constantly upgrading infrastructure, much of the time while allowing at least a minimum functionality.  Yes, when upgrading a bridge within a sparsely traveled country road, it is like the servicing agency will close that road segment altogether.  But if it’s a major arterial where an outright closure could seriously vitiate commuter mobility and harm the local economy, most infrastructure project managers will sacrifice speed of reconstruction to allow at least some operability during the entire process.

While not of national prominence, the upgrade of US 24 certainly matters a great deal to citizens of northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio.  One of the original highways that the Joint Board on Interstate Highways developed in its numbering system (after much prompting by the equivalent of today’s AASHTO), the Ohio stretch largely paralleled the sinuous trajectory of the Maumee River, connecting riverfront towns such as Napoleon and Waterville to the much larger cities of Fort Wayne in Indiana and Toledo in Ohio.  As logistical demands between Fort Wayne and Toledo grew, the riverfront towns became engulfed in traffic, diminishing their appeal and frustrating the truckers who had no need to transect these much smaller municipalities.  Grassroots initiatives from the 1960s in both states resulted in proposals to improve US 24, but only two four-lane bypasses around Napoleon and Defiance materialized.  At one point, the Ohio Department of Highways proposed widening US 24 to four lanes through the heart Waterville and along the Maumee River, but this incited immediate opposition in the community.  In addition, a stretch of the highway west of Defiance developed a reputation for head-on collisions, prompting the Toledo Blade in the 1980s to christen the entire thoroughfare “the Killway.”

Last August, a few hundred citizens gathered in Waterville, Ohio to celebrate the completion of the Fort to Port project, a comprehensive upgrade of US 24 that bypasses most of the communities by cutting across farmland to the north of the river.  Motorists heading between Fort Wayne and Toledo will never need to steamroll through these smaller towns.  And—best of all—the new and improved US 24 has few at grade intersections, helping it to function almost like a limited access interstate highway.

But not quite.

Both states have waffled on exactly how sophisticated the upgrades should be.  Over the years, Indiana’s DOT improved much of its section of US 24 to four-lane expressway status, occasionally introducing cloverleaf and parclo interchanges to endow the thoroughfare with an almost limited-access status.  Budget considerations in the previous decade prompted the State of Indiana to renege on original plans to convert the easternmost leg (from the Fort Wayne I-469 beltway to the Ohio state line) to limited access, but this time the Indiana communities objected.  While residents in the Fort Wayne area argued that heavy truck traffic justified a full upgrade with flyovers and interchanges, INDOT rebutted that traffic volumes aren’t significantly high enough to build limited access.  Nonetheless, Governor Mitch Daniels announced in late 2007 that upgrades to the easternmost segment would include interchanges.  Six years later, the Indiana segment of US 24 functions almost completely like a limited access highway.  But then we get to that Ohio section.

[Forgive the photos.  The majority were taken at dusk and are less than crisp.]

The railroad crossing is more than enough evidence that Ohio’s share of US 24 from Toledo to the Indiana state line is not limited access in its entirety.  If it were, the above photo would be impossible: a true interstate highway never intersects with railroad lines at grade.  Perhaps this anomaly helps to explain the mysterious use of the word “exempt” below the crossings signs.

I’m not sure what the word means in this context, but it may have something to do with the fact that this railway is “exempt” certain standards that might otherwise apply if this were a typical limited access highway.  The ambiguity is confusing.  Fortunately, railroad crossings along US 24 in Ohio are relatively few and far between.

More compelling is the way ODOT treats conventional intersections with other vehicular roads.

Though hardly ubiquitous, intersections such as the one above—with a rural collector road—are relatively common along Ohio’s US 24. After a superficial glance, it might not look particularly strange.  After all, the sign is preparing motorists for an upcoming egress opportunity, in much the same way signage would communicate on a limited access highway.  But a later sign directs motorists to different lanes, depending on whether they desire to turn down these intersecting roads.

Notice the sign to the right of the shoulder, indicating the various turn lanes.  Even it might not seem so strange on its own terms.  But look at US 24 at an intersection—the exact configuration that sign is referring to.

Notice the problem?  The highway only features two lanes.  A special left-turn lane to the left of the sedan in the photo is faintly visible as painted, but it also has a hashed out buffer between it and the main two cartways.  But it is unclear if the turn-lane sane is referring to this, since the sign shows no buffer zones between lanes.  Thus, the sign appears that it could be referring two three lanes when only two exist.  And this apparent contradiction could pose some real safety hazards for motorists seeking to turn right at the intersection.  After all, what is it trying to say?  If the left lane is a left-turn lane, then that means the far right lane is a right-turn lane—but that is a ludicrous suggestion because it would force vehicles to slow to a crawl and turn a hard, 90-degree right.  Yet if vehicles slow to a crawl on this lane—the same lane where motorists also have the option of zooming forward—it could result in a car coming from behind and slamming into the vehicle slowing to turn right.  On a high-speed freeway such as US 24, vehicles making turns need complete protection, but this lane configuration does allow it—unless the vehicle seeking to turn right swerves onto the shoulder with the rumble strips, in order to make that turn.  At least such a maneuver would afford the motorist some protection as he or she slows down in the shoulder.  But who designs roads so that a car must veer into the shoulder in order to make a conventional right turn?

I’m doing my best to narrate these mediocre photos, but perhaps it’s a more apt “you-had-to-be-there moment”.  This predicament is difficult to describe.  The fact remains that Ohio’s US 24 abounds with intersections such as these, made all the more dangerous because they are the only type of intersection we are going to find along this highway.  US24 in Ohio has no stoplights, and speeds are well over 60 miles per hour.  Amazingly,  even in this day and age, ODOT designed intersections such as the ones above, on a thoroughfare that intends to channel traffic with the same level of service we would expect to see on a limited access highway. 

My guess is the majority of US 24 upgrades in Ohio have won accolades from people who live near this thoroughfare or use it regularly.  It achieves what it was meant to do: provide an alternative, high-speed route between Fort Wayne and Toledo that doesn’t overwhelm the numerous small towns along the Maumee River.  But it falls in an uncomfortable middle ground between a conventional arterial road and a limited access highway.  The two states upgraded the road considerably so that it almost has no direct intersections…but they didn’t quite go all the way.  And now the Ohio segment features at least a dozen intersections that look like nothing else I’ve ever seen.  As long as the road remains uncongested, these bizarre right turns should not result in any major collisions.  But odds are strong that US 24’s traffic volume will only grow in time.

Perhaps the existing configuration is a mere “placeholder”, preparing the right-of-way for the eventual upgrades it needs to become a fully functional limited access highway.  But, regardless of the future of US 24, the current design evokes serious compromise and negligent road design.  It’s still infrastructure, and most of us don’t contemplate the topic out of fun.  As mentioned earlier, we should remain unaware of high-performance unless something goes wrong.  My only hope is that a high-speed rear-ending never transpires along this highway—a road in which, as we celebrate its achievements, we become complacently blind to its weaknesses.  And then we get the “killway” all over again.