Jacob Simmering Profile picture
Oct 22, 2019 4 tweets 1 min read Read on X
Coralville: "Sorry our stroad is dangerous and almost killed you. Have you tried our even more dangerous sidewalks yet?"

Not an acceptable answer. We need action, not reaction.

littlevillagemag.com/letter-to-the-…
Johnson County tried that on Old 218 - and it cost an 83 year old retired pastor his life. We should not seek to emulate that example.
#BanCars would be ideal but not realistic. Simply starting with realizing 12 foot travel lanes, clear zones, multiple curb cuts for each parcel, and designing for an A LOS at peak demand does not a livable street make.
The saddest part of all may be that the City of Coralville government loves their City Engineer (who has had the job for over 30 years) - they call him "brilliant."

The city wants to build a ped-friendly mixed use corridor. He builds a highway style road right down the middle.

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More from @iacobus42

Sep 23, 2020
I had a poll yesterday for the Greenfield Senate campaign trying out new messaging. One was about climate change and how Greenfield is going to take on "corporate polluters" to protect and expand our environmental protections.
Let's look at how Iowa City's Climate Action plan is going - just about one year into the self-declared Climate Emergency.
Part of the plan was to lease 19 acres of land to MidAmerican energy to build 10,000 solar panels - enough to power 580 typical homes, or about 2% of all homes in Iowa City. The 19 acres would be located inside a 200 acre park and the would be next to an interstate highway.
Read 22 tweets
Nov 26, 2019
Today is one of those days I really love my department and job. I left journal club and the department chair was in the hall. He asked if I had a minute, he had some questions for me. We went to his office. He had 3 questions. #AcademicParent #AcademicTwitter
Question 1: Does the baby have her own room yet? The baby should go into her own room to sleep and you should close the door and then go into your room and close the door. Let her cry. Crying = alveoli expansion = good for the lungs. Throw out any monitors.
Question 2: Do you give the baby warm or cold milk? He asked all of his babies if they liked their milk warm or cold, and they didn't answer. So he gave them the milk cold. Don't give the baby a choice and she'll never know. Cold milk + rested parent > warm milk + tired parent.
Read 5 tweets
Nov 21, 2019
I went to an @MPOJC bike master plan open house last night. It's a good plan and I'll be happy when it's implemented. The only part that left me sad was the amount and importance of the roads marked as "difficult road section." Image
There are 3 roads and 1 trail crossing of the interstate in Coralville. 1 road lacks sidewalks (prohibited by DOT rules due to offramps). The other 2 are both marked as difficult road sections.
1st Ave was just (at great cost) completely rebuilt and widened. Despite having a Complete Streets policy, the new road lacks bicycle infrastructure. It is even, after a once in a generation opportunity to make it right, marked as a difficult road section.
Read 6 tweets
Nov 6, 2019
@CityOfIowaCity raised the speed limit on a section of road. Reasoning that in the year has been open there have been no fatal crashes with peds = safe. Except their analysis is widely underpowered to detect an increase in risk. Like <5% power. #badstats #SafetyOverSpeed
If crashes happened before at 12 times a year, on average, they'd need the rate to *double* in order to have 80% power to find a signal. At 24 times/year, they'd need crashes to happen about 1.7 times more often.
For fatal crashes when happen less often (say 1 time per decade) they would need the rate to be well over 20 times worse than before to have a detectable signal.
Read 8 tweets
Oct 30, 2019
When meeting with a council member he asked about data showing issues with 1st Ave in Coralville. MPOJC has collision rate data by intersection/midblock location. Adjusted for volume and length, 1st Ave has 2.07 times more collisions than the mean road
Being an economist (who believes in the safety of 10 foot lanes over 12 foot lanes), I took it a step further. Of the 1.2 miles, 0.5 had been "improved" to 12 foot lanes from 10 feet. The other 0.7 miles were done after the data ends. Same cars, same drivers, same traffic.
Collision rate on the 0.5 miles that was improved was 3.37 times higher than the national average.

Collision rate on the section with 10 foot lanes was 1.30 times higher.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 23, 2019
@greg_shill I'll meet your fun with dealing with Iowa City City Council with Coralville. I just had a 71 year old dentist whose been in office for 32 years tell me I don't know anything about roads or urban planning when I cited NACTO and the FHWA.
He followed up by telling me, on the record, that bikes should not be allowed on 1st Ave because it is for cars. It's an arterial and therefore only cars should use it. It's a highway. (Actually it isn't).
When I asked about the statue Coralville passed in 2016 formally incorporate a Complete Streets requirement, he again told me that I was wrong and had no idea what I was talking about. Of course, he had no idea what Complete Streets policy is.
Read 5 tweets

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