Buses, bikes, and better safety measures: Hopes for our transportation future in the heart of the Valley of the Sun

I attended the second public input meeting for the Downtown Phoenix Transportation Plan Update, which aims to predict and plan for downtown’s growing population and building density.

I’ve been fortunate to live, work, and study all throughout downtown over the past three years while in law school at ASU. Maybe I’m biased, but I think a younger perspective is valuable in any public comment process, which are usually dominated by older, wealthier stakeholders with more familiarity with the process and more time on their hands.

My primary hope for the entire study zone, if not many other areas of Phoenix, is to add protected bike infrastructure and dedicated bus lanes. In modeling, design, and execution, high-capacity mobility including transit, sidewalks, and real, usable bike lanes generally deserve priority when allocating the city’s increasingly precious road space.

I expressed concern to city staff about a poster displaying the projected “Level of Service” at a number of downtown intersections in 2025. This outdated metric ignores anyone not in a car and prioritizes fast traffic throughput and driver convenience over safety, equity, economic, or air quality concerns. Phoenix should assess the performance of its streets and intersections on their capacity to move more people safely and reduce the need to drive downtown (cutting VMT), not to maximize the flood of rush hour traffic.

1. Phoenicians deserve real mobility choice: the ability to walk, bike, drive, or take transit around the city without fear or hardship.

Getting to and around Downtown Phoenix in a safe and convenient way shouldn’t be a luxury only for people driving. Ensuring streets are designed to protect the most vulnerable road users — children, elderly and their caregivers, disabled people, and everyone not shielded in a vehicle — is an issue of basic equity.

Walking and biking around town, I regularly face near-collisions on roads designed only for cars and angry yelling from impatient or inattentive drivers. These moments of conflict are an inevitable result of streets that do not accommodate all users equally, and they get my heart racing in the worst way.

If I, as an able-bodied, relatively fit young man, so often feel unsafe on Phoenix roads due to dangerous car traffic, imagine the stress and anxiety that crossing the street causes for someone very old, or very young, or tired, or overheated, or using a wheelchair, or carrying a child, or carrying groceries, or walking a dog, or running for a bus, or who just wants to get to work or run an errand without fearing for their life.

Downtown Phoenix should aspire to welcome families who want an active lifestyle, seniors and others who are unable to drive, those cannot afford the burdensome costs of owning a car, and anyone else who simply wants the freedom to choose how they move around our city.

2. Protected bike lanes increase safety for people biking, walking, and driving alike, which causes more people to feel comfortable biking.

A recent study indicated that “cities with protected and separated bike lanes had 44 percent fewer [traffic] deaths than the average city.” I’ve written before about the responsibility Phoenix city leaders must take for the unacceptable number of people killed or injured on our roads. Phoenix should automatically study and implement protected bike routes whenever a road is due for maintenance or a re-design.

Demonstrating the “if you build it, they will come” effect, creating a network of safe, dedicated, interconnected bike infrastructure both protects existing riders and dramatically widens the pool of who feels safe biking in the city. Useful bike lanes also cut car dependence and support transit by making it more feasible to ride to a bus or train stop, increasing the “ride-shed” of people with easy access to a car-free commute.

3. A dedicated bus lane allows for the transit speed of light rail at lower cost and delay, greatly improving transit connectivity and providing a faster alternative to driving.

A lane allowing buses carrying many passengers to zip past cars carrying mostly lone drivers is an affordable, sensible way to move more people through congestion. Bus lanes have been effective in cities worldwide for decades, and recent results from Washington, D.C. show they remain one of the best ways to fix traffic quickly.

Given that Phoenix generally has very wide multi-lane roads built closer to a twentieth–century highway standard than to modern Complete Streets principles, there is plenty of road space available to dedicate to buses and bikes. Many extra traffic lanes sit mostly empty most of the time, a redundancy that creates the opportunity to right-size inefficient roads. Overly wide city streets also cause drivers to ignore speed limits by making it feel safe to travel at excess speed. Redesigning streets for a diversity of users makes everyone safer while increasing network capacity.

Making transit faster and more convenient sets off a virtuous cycle where more people can rely on the bus and want to live near a stop, which spurs investment in more housing and jobs near transit, which justifies further transit improvements.

As it rapidly grows into its future as a vibrant, residential, “real city,” Downtown Phoenix must seriously consider the pitfalls of maintaining a car-dominated status quo that fails our most vulnerable residents and degrades quality of life for all.