Midwestern Consulting

Some zoning ordinances are subject to the rule of unintended consequences. The intent is often not codified in a way that anticipates every possible application of the ordinance requirements. An example is the Ann Arbor Off-street Parking ordinance intended to prevent parking between commercial buildings and adjacent rights-of-way. 

Our client owns a shopping center in a C3/Commercial zoning district with frontage on three public streets. A remodeling project is proposed to construct entries on a blank face of the center and add parking between the building and the street.

City planning staff opposed parking in this location because the “intent” of Chapter 59 is to require buildings to be located close to front property lines with parking in side or rear yards. We argued that the “content” of the ordinance is the controlling factor and that the ordinance includes an exception for sites with multiple frontages.  We submitted a Zoning Compliance Permit Application.

Chapter 59, Section 5:168, item (2) c, describes an exception to the prohibition of parking between the building and the street. “Sites with more than 1 front line; the requirements of paragraph (1) in this section shall apply to only 1 front lot line. For all other lot lines abutting streets, parking shall be located behind the minimum front setback requirement, per Chapter 55 (Zoning).”

That paragraph reads “Vehicular parking structures, lots and space shall not be located in the front open space. No space within a parking structure or lot may be closer to the street than the front face of a building.”

1. The site has frontage on three public streets.

Item (2) c applies and requires that only 1 of the frontage cannot have parking between the building and the street.

The preliminary site concept showed proposed improvements including removal of all parking spaces between the building and one of the other two frontages, one that is functionally a rear yard.  Removing that parking makes that frontage comply with paragraph (1). The front line adjacent to proposed parking no longer has to meet that requirement.

1. The other two front lines are not subject to paragraph (1) and are subject to the requirement that “parking shall be located behind the minimum front setback requirement” which is 10 feet.

The Zoning Compliance Application was approved. The City immediately began the process of changing Chapter 59 to revise the ordinance to require a minimum 25 foot setback rather than the 10 minimum permitted in the C3 district.

We submitted a Site Plan that showed a minimum 25 foot parking setback and that was unanimously approved.

An engineering consultant once told me that signs, speed bumps, and retaining walls are examples of failures in design. If the design is right, those things are not needed.

The US-23/Lee Road round-about traffic controls are an example of design failure. Not only is there a mind bending number of directional signs and pavement markings, but the control devices are different in each of the round-abouts. To navigate them safely, the best path is to ignore the controls, slow down, and watch the other drivers. That is a mental speed bump.

David Engwicht, a “social inventor” in Australia, wrote Mental Speed Bumps.  The Smarter Way to Tame Trafficin 2005, while Hans Monderman, a traffic engineer, was in the Netherlands discovering a radical new way to tame neighborhood traffic: don’t.

The basic idea is that removing all traffic signs, speed bumps, line markings and traffic lights results in reduced traffic speed and greater safety. The lack of traffic controls creates “mental speed bumps.”

“Shared roads” or “complete streets” are now mainstream applications of the social contract we already apply at places like four way stops.  These purposely mix user types within the overall transportation system. Another example of shared use of space is the holiday shopping rush at the regional mall. A flood of vehicles shares an enormous parking area with hoards of shoppers rushing in and out of the mall.  The traffic flow is managed by the interaction between the pedestrians and the drivers rather than by traffic cops or signals, or zillions of directional signs.

Engwicht’s small volume describes the safety paradox, the idea that creating intrigue and uncertainty makes streets safer. That flies in the face of the conventional idea that predictability increases safety.  But predictability leads to increased speed and a lower level of concentration on the part of drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. Add that to distractions like talking on a cell phone, text messaging, listening to music on an iPod, etc. etc. and people are not in the moment, are not aware of or truly experiencing their environment, and are essentially on auto pilot, or as dad would say, “cruisin’ for a brusin’”!

This small volume is “a practical, down-to-earth guide for residents, parents, health professionals, city planners and anyone interested in creating more livable streets.”

An aerial photo of the Lee Road roundabout mess

There has been a lot of discussion lately about “Complete Streets” – streets that accommodate all forms of vehicular and pedestrian transportation. And that creates the problem: putting apparently incompatible forms of transportation in the same space.  The solution often seems to be to subdivide the “shared” street into segments using signage or markings or signals that serve various uses. There goes the basic concept of “shared” use.

Two different approaches to solving potential conflicts are:

A. Provide visual cues and minimize regulatory signage:  Deleting or minimizing signs and symbols in favor of subliminal or visual clues appears to engage people more quickly, partly because they are not sure what they are seeing, and partly because the primitive part of the brain that reads the visual cues is faster that the rational part of the brain.  The colors and shapes of stop signs and yield signs are probably more effective than the lettering.  Commercial examples of symbols that are totally effective without lettering (branding) include the Shell Oil sign and now the Starbucks symbol.

Or,

B. Plaster everything with regulatory signage:  Most of the designs for these streets are full of signs of all descriptions, painted lanes, stripes, arrows, stop bars, flashing lights, and more. Reading and following these signs requires a reaction from our frontal lobes, the rational part of the brain. 

A good example of traffic regulatory markings and signage gone awry is on the roundabouts at the US-23 expressway Lee Road exit between Ann Arbor and Brighton.  Each roundabout has a forest of signs and a carpet of stripes, arrows and what all, and lots of drivers trying to figure out what the signs all mean while avoiding other vehicles whose drivers are doing the same.  To make matters worse, the signage and markings on each roundabout is different.  The roundabout on the west side of the expressway is under Livingston County Road Commission jurisdiction and the one on the east is under Oakland County Road Commission jurisdiction.

In a backwards sort of way, the amount of signage and markings on the Lee Road roundabouts may effectively be about the same as having no signs at all.  The visual cloud of directions can be so overwhelming that drivers ignore everything, shut off their rational brains, and simply go slowly and negotiate positions and directions with the other drivers while using the survival mode in their primitive brains.

An article in the March 2011 American Planning Association Planning magazine by Raymond Heinrich and titled “Traffic Accidents Don’t Just Happen…They’re Caused” provides an interesting take on traffic safety and regulations:  “When it comes to safety, the message is plain:  We are relying on signs, road paint, and the wrong side of our brain for traffic management instead of pattern recognition for vehicle guidance.  We should be learning from neurologists and cognitive psychologists who say that subconscious cues can automatically take road safety up a notch.”

Earl Ophoff, RLA is a registered landscape architect and can be reached at Midwestern Consulting in Ann Arbor, Michigan (734.995.0200).