If you look at any transportation model for a city, the success of the city is based on how well the car is accommodated. In West Palm Beach, the car was fine, but our city was dead 10 years ago. The street became the monopoly of the car to the exclusion of pedestrians.

 Six-lane US 1, which slices through the city in two broad swaths, one in each direction, will be reduced to 2 separate two-lane roads. To make nice slow streets that are very pedestrian-friendly, sidewalks will be widened, landscaping will be added on both sides and shady patios will be created on the sidewalks where people can sit...The move has won support from initially skeptical business groups because of the success in areas that have already received the Lockwood treatment. Commercial rents have risen from $5 per square foot to $25 in downtown areas that have been traffic-calmed. Once half-occupied, commercial buildings now have no vacancies...In the next 2 years, the city expects to have 560 more new homes downtown.

 Lockwood points to a typical inner-city street where the city recently invested $8,000 in traffic calming and beautification. It was lined with boarded-up homes and had become a favorite place for truck drivers to dump garbage. Parking a car on the street was considered unwise. The city is narrowing the street from 35 feet to 25 feet, putting in curbside trees and narrowing every approach to the neighborhood school so children can walk to school without encountering speeding traffic. In similar neighborhoods where the city has already made such changes, garbage dumping no longer occurs, crime has dropped and homeowners take newfound pride in the upkeep of the neighborhood.

 Typically, streets that have been traffic-calmed have 50 percent fewer collisions than conventionally designed streets and 80 percent fewer fatalities...The city has not had a single collision on a traffic-calmed street.

 "I get calls from commuters who say, 'Your job is to move cars as fast as possible,'" Lockwood says. "I say, 'my job is to make the city livable and sustainable. I don't think we should sacrifice quality of life in the inner city for people in the suburbs."

 Actually, when traffic calming is done right and the streets become more scenic, everyone should be happy. Drivers will slow down willingly and naturally, kids can cross safely, people can go shopping in harmony with the traffic and business won't dry up.

 It is no longer permissible to say a road is being "upgraded" when it is really being widened.

 There was a concern for the safety of children at a downtown school due to speeding motorists. This became even more evident when the crossing guard was struck by a motorist. The crossing was reconstructed with a raised pedestrian speed table. At the crossing, the street is narrowed to notify motorists of the crossing and to shorten the pedestrian crossing distance. The reclaimed space is used for landscaping which serves to beautify the street and also to provide motorists with additional clues of the crossing, reducing the overall amount of signage required.

 The last several decades of transportation planning have contributed to a slow decay of portions of the city...streets were planned and incrementally transformed to cater strictly to the mobility/level of service of motor vehicle users, most of which had moved out of the urban areas to the suburbs....City streets in the urban area were perceived as dangerous, dirty, and hostile environments suitable only for drug dealers and prostitutes. Visitors and downtown workers sought the safety of their cars and residents cocooned themselves in their homes, further eroding the sense of community and the street environment.

 West Palm Beach has an incorrect reputation of being a wealthy city. The truth is that 48 percent of its population is low/moderate income.

 The [former calming] policy discouraged traffic calming on collector streets and arterials. It also discouraged it in commercial areas and in downtown...Another flaw was the mandatory use of temporary traffic calming test periods. The temporary traffic calming measures added costs to the program. So, in order to save money, they were built cheaply, and therefore looked "temporary." That contributed nothing aesthetically to the neighborhood or the street. Often, objections were made by residents simply because of "ugliness." With the exception of one poorly planned and unique roundabout on an arterial road, no permanent traffic calming measure has ever been removed in West Palm Beach. Consequently, the cost effectiveness of using temporary measures is absent and their mandatory use for every implementation was dropped.

 The [new calming] policy was kept non-prescriptive, so that staff had the flexibility to use a variety of approaches to solve problems. The policy demonstrates a public trust in the professionalism of the staff to do what is in the City's best interest, instead of prescribing a process to which staff must adhere. This also allows staff to be creative and try new ideas, with confidence and City support, at a level that would be impossible to achieve through a prescriptive policy.

 The [new] traffic calming policy states that streets cannot be reconstructed with their current configuration unless specifically recommended in writing by the city transportation planner...In other words, traffic calming is the rule, not the exception...calming is now considered normal practice. It is not an alternative to conventional street engineering...there is no specific requirement for analysis of the street nor area to determine whether traffic calming is warranted. That is a given. Keeping streets in their conventional layout needs to be specifically warranted now. There are also no mandatory test periods.

 The evolution of traffic calming combined with the use of New Urbanist principles, allowed the City to begin its metamorphosis into a "masterpiece city." The theme of the Mayor's 1999 State of the City Address was "Pardon our Dust, We are Building a Masterpiece." None of this would have been possible without innovation and the confidence to use it.

 The downtown had become so office-oriented by the early 1990s that there was little or no activity in the downtown after 5 pm and on weekends. Downtown housing was [very] limited...The streets were constructed to look and operate more like "escape routes" than downtown streets.

 In 1992, the City initiated a traffic calming plan, disguised as a streetscaping plan...Clematis Street was returned to two-way operation. Traffic calming measures were provided along the street which included narrowings, a raised intersection, and lateral shifts. Turn lanes were removed, as were traffic signals...Clematis Street regained its position as the heart of the downtown, providing the life's blood to the rest of the city...Property values along the street have more than doubled.

 Commuters would consistently cut through the Old Northwood and Northboro Park neighborhoods to decrease their travel time. Over time, the neighborhoods deteriorated and became a haven for drug dealers and prostitution. A spokesperson for the real estate firm that sells the most homes in the neighborhoods stated that often, when he mentioned properties in the area to potential home buyers, they would hang up on him. This is not the case today. The same realtor now has waiting lists for potential buyers in the neighborhoods, many of which are young families...The demand to live in the 2 neighborhoods continues to grow as quickly as the quality of life. People with choice are beginning to opt for a more urban lifestyle.

 The design for CityPlace -- a $400 million mixed use project downtown -- follows New Urbanist principles with a minimum of 2 stories for all buildings, and ground floor retail.

 The common theme of the new traffic calming program is to provide more than one reason for the measures. In that way, more people will have reasons to support the program (i.e., they like trees, they like slowing down speeders, they like recreational paths, etc.)

 The City does not include nor consider route modification techniques as traffic calming. Examples include diverters, turn prohibitions, closures, or one-way streets...West Palm Beach is interested in increasing and maintaining access and, therefore, highly discourages the use of route modifications.

 Particular importance is assigned to pedestrians. In the past, in became common practice to give pedestrians the minimum green time possible to cross streets at signalized intersections, assuming that they were waiting at the curb prior to getting their signal to cross. The corollary of this practice was, of course, to give as much green time as possible to motor vehicle users. At some intersections, pedestrians were eventually required to find and press a button or their crossing time would be inadequate or non-existent. The rationalization for these and other common anti-pedestrian practices was typically couched in the idea that it was more "efficient and convenient" to keep the motor vehicle users moving as fast as possible.

 Warrants [in some cities], based on pedestrian volumes, are actually required before paths are constructed along streets. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy: nobody walks because there are no sidewalks and no sidewalks will be built until enough people walk.

 Two of the objectives of traffic calming are to promote pedestrian travel and to improve the pedestrian environment. These objectives were incorporated into West Palm Beach's Comprehensive Plan. Of particular interest, was the development of an environmental hierarchy of modes which is to be considered during any and all street modification projects. The pedestrian was at the top of the hierarchy, and the single occupancy automobile was at the bottom.

 Transportation statistics do not typically govern the behavior of the average person, but perceptions do. Perceptions dictate where people buy homes. They dictate property values. They determine if parents will let their children walk to the park or to school. They determine if folks socialize along the street. Perceptions affect behavior such as littering and property maintenance. Perceptions affect how safe people feel, where they want to shop, and where they want to spend time...If most folks perceive the downtown as dangerous, then they will not spend time there, invest there, nor live there...traffic calming can and does affect perceptions. Therefore, in cities where perceptions are an issue, there is nothing wrong with correcting them with the help of traffic calming.

 If we build the automobile-oriented streets, they will come (the automobiles). Increasing capacity for automobiles induces latent automobile travel demand. Simply put, additional automobile capacity encourages automobile use...West Palm Beach must accept that it cannot build its way out of congestion.

 Traffic engineers have been trying to solve the problem of congestion with a number of techniques, all designed to increase motor vehicle capacity and thereby alleviate congestion. The City accepts and now promotes the principle that congestion is not the problem, and increases in motor vehicle capacity, more often than not, are not the solution.

 Capital "improvement" programs are filled with projects justified as increases in motor vehicle capacity to "satisfy demand" and "eliminate" congestion. This is rarely the result. Usually, the increases in motor vehicle capacity often spur a new wave of development, a change in driver behavior, a further suburb, increased motor vehicle use, and the ultimate return to congestion, or the problem is shifted to the next bottleneck or intersection. The usual result is that the number of persons and automobiles which participate in the congestion is increased, further adding to auto-dependency.

 Typically, the [transportation] models predict the need for more automobile capacity on the streets, the streets are expanded, and the predictions appear to come true; more motor vehicles using the streets. The models become self-fulfilling prophecies...without the continual increases in motor vehicle capacity, it is likely that in reality the number of motor vehicles would never exceed a certain threshold volume, regardless of the changes in land use.

 The typical practice of most areas would be to simply continue to expand the streets within the street network, attempting to keep pace with the growing "problem" of congestion. However, the City is reversing this trend in an attempt to reduce motor vehicle dominance on city streets and return them to residents, business people, workers, children, etc. This does not imply creating an auto-free environment. That would be impossible and impractical. The idea is to change the prioritization of the current street network.

 Previously, the design of all streets has placed the motor vehicle and its passengers at the top of the priority list, ignoring all other aspects of the environment in which the street is placed. For some streets, this is acceptable (e.g., I-95 and the Florida Turnpike). The problem lies with placing these same design standards on smaller streets within West Palm Beach.

 Conventional strategies include widening streets, adding turn lanes, removing on-street parking, and changing signal timing.

 The more new motor vehicle infrastructure is built, the more people in and around West Palm Beach become dependent on it, the more harm will come to the city, and the harder the job will be to reduce the dependence on motor vehicles. Dealing with the dependence on motor vehicles is critical to turning around some of the negative aspects of living in West Palm Beach.

 It is often claimed that bus transit is assisted by raising the speed of the entire traffic stream...[however], the incentive to use transit is diminished by a general speed-up of all motor vehicles, and the overall effectiveness of transit is worsened. This is because the incentive to use transit is based on its performance relative to the automobile, and its relative performance worsens as motor vehicle traffic speeds increase...It is not mere coincidence that in the cities (and in districts w/in cities) where traffic moves the slowest, transit is more productive.

 Almost without exception, measures that improve the situation for motor vehicles make the situation worse for pedestrians, e.g., right turn channels at intersections, pedestrian flyovers, pedestrian push buttons at signalized intersections, additional motor vehicle lanes and narrow sidewalks.

 Children are arguably the primary victims of deteriorated pedestrian environments. This has put pressure on families with children to abandon the central city if they are able. Even in the suburbs, the dangers of street crossings and the distances to the locations of children's activities have caused parents to become chauffeurs, creating auto trips that would be completely unnecessary in an environment that is less hostile to pedestrians, and less auto-oriented.

 The common response to the suggestion of bicycling as a mode of transportation in West Palm Beach is, "Who would ride on these streets? They are too dangerous." This mentality has been developed through the years of bias created by the neglect of transportation planners to design for all potential users. The streets are perceived as too dangerous for cycling (not so for automobiles).

 The "expand the motor vehicle infrastructure" approaches have simply postponed sustainable solutions and have magnified the challenges further.

 When one considers the tendency for the posted speed limits to be set at approximately 10 miles per hour lower than the design speed of the street, it is no wonder that most drivers tend to drive at 5 to 10 mph over the posted speed...the incentive to obey the posted speed limit is small. It is often jokingly referred to as a "suggestion."

 Conventional level-of-service standards used for streets in Florida are inappropriately used for all streets. They do not take into consideration: adjacent land uses (residential, commercial, etc.), other users (pedestrians, children, bicyclists, etc.), and function of the street (mobility, access, amenity, recreation, celebration, shopping, etc.) [The mathematical process of determining street levels-of-service] has the guise of rigor and science, but simply amounts to a pseudo-science.

 It has been amply demonstrated over the years that cars expand to fill the available road space...[the widened] road will influence land use.

 Congestion can actually be creatively exploited as a tool in helping a city progress toward lower car dependency and lower energy use through a better balance between cars, transit, walking, and bicycling.

 When biologists examine complex problems, like monitoring a wetland, they choose an indicator species, like a frog. If the frog population is doing well, the biologists conclude that the wetland is doing well...The trick is to choose the correct indicator species...transportation professionals picked the wrong indicator species, the automobile. It would be like the biologist choosing to model a plant that kills wetlands when the emphasis should be placed on the wetland and not the killer plant. The correct indicator species [for a city street] would have been the pedestrian, particularly vulnerable pedestrians: the young, elderly, disabled, etc.

 They...used the unsubstantiated claim that a person's decision to use an automobile equated to democratic support for pro-automobile practices, when the truth is that the separate and segregate practices over the last 50 years had given them little choice but to use automobiles...transportation planners shape our street and highway networks and then they shape us. If we design our communities to be auto-oriented, that is what we will get. If we design them with a balanced system, we will get a balanced system. Americans are very adaptable people; wherever we go on our vacations and other travels, we adapt quickly to the land use patterns and transportation systems of the area. Consequently, if we change our cities in the U.S., we can and will adapt accordingly.