Free Resources | Land Use | CV Livable Places News | Summer 2001

Summer 2001

• Law Enforcement and Planning Departments Get Street-Wise
• PROJECTS: Fresno’s CURE to Abandoned Properties
• PLANS: Bakersfield Visions Downtown in 2020
• PLACES: Manteca Trail Grabs State Award
• San Joaquin Valley Livable Places News Main Page

Law Enforcement and Planning Departments Get Street-Wise

In most cities, the biggest chunk of the local government budget goes to law enforcement. However, these costs might be reduced if streets and neighborhoods could be designed to be “self-policing.” The good news is, they can be!

Accident-Preventing Streets

Experience has shown that traffic accidents are reduced dramatically when traffic lights and stop signs are replaced by roundabouts. A comprehensive study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (http://www.highwaysafety.org) documented a reduction of as much as 90% in fatal or incapacity injuries, a 75% decrease in injury-producing crashes, and a 39% decrease in all types of traffic accidents. Roundabouts slow traffic (reducing the need for police patrols) and completely eliminate the possibility of high-speed, broadside accidents.

Other research has documented that narrow streets are safer. Engineer Peter Swift studied 20,000 police accident reports in Longmont, Colorado, and found that as streets got wider, the number of accidents increased. The safest streets were narrow, slow, 24-foot wide streets. The most dangerous were 36-foot wide streets typical of new subdivisions.

When traffic specialist Dan Burden offered a Local Government Commission-sponsored seminar on traffic calming in Reedley last fall, Clovis Police Lieutenant Jim Zulim was there. Zulim, commander of one of Clovis’ two patrol sectors, was no stranger to the link between planning issues and police concerns. His department has been working with City planners for a number of years on conditional use permits. Given his department’s history of community-oriented policing, Zulim had also attended countless neighborhood meetings where residents complained of “people going 45 mph in a 25-mph zone on a street engineered for 50 mph,” he said.

With an open ear towards traffic calming and roundabouts, Zulim enlisted the support of Clovis’ police chief and planning director to implement traffic calming measures. The police department is now working with the planning and engineering departments in both Clovis and Fresno to select sites for constructing roundabouts in areas that link the two cities. Completion of the first roundabout is expected by fall.

The police and the planning department are also reexamining their street and sidewalk standards with an eye towards walkability and safety. Their efforts to narrow street standards are likely to contribute to a reduction in crime as well as a reduction in the number of traffic accidents.

Street Design Helps Residents Watch Out for One Another

Last January, Zulim and several of his fellow officers attended the LGC’s Reinventing Community conference ® a national forum focused on the connections between health, crime, land use and transportation. Al Zelinka, author of SafeScape: Creating Safer, More Livable Communities, explained why a neighborhood designed for a stronger sense of community will also be a safer place.

Zelinka depicted the planning elements which allow a sense of community to develop – mixed-use neighborhoods, homes with front porches, and narrow tree-lined streets – all of which keep more people on the street and allow them to bump into one another in shared public places. The result is a place where neighbors know or recognize one another.

Where people know one another, they are more likely to watch out for one another. A Harvard School of Public Health study found that the sense of community, not social or economic class, is the best predictor of neighborhood crime rates.

Thus, the Clovis Police Department went home to initiate even more community-building land use patterns in their city. They are promoting infill development in older neighborhoods and are working with the Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District, the Fresno Irrigation District and the Clovis Planning Department to turn an existing flood basin into a community water park ® with riparian trails, a pier and a re-circulating stream. Contact Lt. Zulim at jimz@ci.sclovis.ca.us.

At a May LGC-hosted seminar (following the Great Valley Center’s annual conference), Zelinka once again urged planning and police departments to work together: “What could be a more powerful alliance in local government to create stronger neighborhoods?”

Resources Are Available

The Local Government Commission currently has a limited number of discount coupons for Zelinka’s SafeScape book. For other traffic calming and crime reducing planning resources, contact Steve Hoyt at (916) 448-1198 x301 or email shoyt@lgc.org.

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