Overcoming Misinformation to Implement a Road Diet

Amidst a yearslong project to make a roadway safer in Bellingham, Washington, Chris Comeau — a senior transportation planner with the city at the time — had to contend not just with the challenge of reducing lane widths but also with misinformation being spread about the project.

Alabama Street is a four-lane road that connects several low-income neighborhoods in Bellingham — a northwest coastal city closer to Vancouver than Seattle and that has a population of approximately 100,000. The street was widened in the 1960s to accommodate more automobiles and higher speeds. There were no bicycle lanes or facilities, and the road was used as a high-frequency bus route for the Gold Line of the Whatcom Transportation Authority.

"It cut these neighborhoods in half and [made] it difficult for people to walk across the street," Comeau said. "There were many collisions on the street. And the people who lived along the corridor, all they heard all the time was noise from traffic."

In 2011, Alabama Street was identified as having the second-highest collision rate for vehicles in Whatcom County despite just having 19,000 vehicles pass through a day. From 2006 to 2011, there were 521 collisions with 195 injuries — an annual injury rate of 37.4 percent.

Bellingham's Road Diet: Challenges and Solutions

But in 2012, Bellingham was invited to apply for a federal Highway Safety Improvement Program grant by the Washington State Department of Transportation because of the high number of collisions happening on Alabama Street.

Early on, a road diet was identified as the way to reduce collisions. But as the team worked to come up with a plan, Comeau said misinformation and a few vocal detractors began to make noise in the community. Local media coverage turned the public's focus on the project away from reducing collisions and improving safety to a debate about traffic congestion versus bike lanes.

Before planners carried out a $4.3 million road diet on Alabama Street, it had the second-highest collision rate for vehicles in Whatcom County. Now, in its present state, it has reduced collisions with injuries by about 28 percent. Photo courtesy of Chris Comeau.

Comeau said he was taken aback after reading a news report that mischaracterized the project's goal of reducing traffic accidents on Alabama Street as trying to "ram bicycle lanes down your throat," he recalled. "All of a sudden, the project went from something perfectly objective and above board in terms of trying to reduce collisions to 'the city is trying to ram its progressive agenda down the throats of its unknowing citizens.'"

The case study also stated that in May 2014, "many neighborhood residents organized and stood on the corners of the five blocks of dead-end streets during the evening rush hour on Alabama Street holding protest signs against the installation of c-curb median."

"It's like, you can't make this stuff up," Comeau said. And with technology and social media being ubiquitous, there was no way to control the narrative. "It just got attacked from so many different angles and sides."

But Comeau said a public planner's job is to: get the data and then provide a recommendation to elected officials that gives the best solution for the greatest number of residents; and to keep providing the facts in the face of misinformation.

"And, with transportation, it is almost always — and, sometimes, exclusively — revolves around public safety," he said. "We were trying to prevent people from getting hurt. And not only that but [also] we were trying to improve the quality of life for all the city's residents."

As for the focus on bike lanes, Comeau said he thinks there are a lot of people who have a negative reaction to that because they don't understand the risks that a bicyclist faces on roadways.

"They don't have that personal experience of what it feels like to be trying to ride a bike and having cars zooming past you or be one foot away," he said. "They don't understand all the conflict that a bicyclist deals with."

He also believes part of the divide comes from change itself.

"With city planning, no matter how much public participation there is, when some individuals don't get what they want, they revert to promoting an agenda that is false or misinformed or purposely lying in public at public hearings," he said.

Before approval of the project, protesters — spurred by misinformation about the proposal — sought to curb the road diet. To hear their concerns, Bellingham's elected officials conducted an additional public meeting and had planners lay out the plan. Graphic courtesy of Chris Comeau.

Weaving Neighborhoods Back Together

To get the Alabama Street project back on track, Comeau said the city council had to host an additional public hearing at which staff went over the grant funding Bellingham had received, the particulars of the project, and allowed residents to provide their feedback.

"People had an opportunity to say their piece, and [some] came up and said things that were factually incorrect," Comeau said.

Ultimately, the project was allowed to move forward with the removal of a proposed c-curb median from a five-block portion of Alabama Street. The planning team implemented a $4.3 million project that reduced four lanes to three on approximately 1.75 miles of the roadway — along with other key upgrades and improvements.

"So, it was a road diet, but done in a way that also accommodated the needs of automobiles, because Alabama Street corridor is a very heavy commuter road," he said. "Everybody won — except those who didn't like it."

In the years that followed the project's completion, Comeau continued to track the data to see if the improvements made a difference. From 2017 to 2019, there were 126 collisions on Alabama Street — but just 42 injuries, meaning there was a 28.2 percent reduction in injuries.

"The narrower you make the physical space or the lanes, the more the driver has to pay attention," Comeau said. "That's critical. It requires a driver to use their brain more. And people hate to admit this, but I think we've all become so Pavlovian in terms of our response [while driving]."

And the impact on people driving on Alabama Street? The study showed that it added less than a minute of extra travel time, even with all the new safety features and bike lanes.

He also believes the project "literally wove the neighborhoods back together."

"This corridor goes through one of the lowest-income neighborhoods in the entire city, and we heard a lot from the people who lived there," he said. "We made it so they could walk along and cross this street, something they couldn't do for decades because of the busy roadway. So, it changed life for them."

For more on road diets — and how a new study suggests narrowing traffic lanes may lead to fewer vehicle collisions involving pedestrian injuries and deaths — read Planning.

Top image: Transportation planners in Bellingham, Washington — about 21 miles south of the Canadian border — implemented a road diet on Alabama Street in 2015. Brian Bergquist.