VILLAGE OF HAMBURG
Consultant to check out newly ‘walkable’ Main Street
Published: April 20, 2009, 12:30 am
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He predicted seven years ago that Hamburg’s Main Street “will be the most perfect Main Street built in America.”
Now Dan Burden is coming back to check out his prediction.
Burden, the Walkable Communities guru who coaxed, cajoled and convinced some reluctant residents and the state Department of Transportation that the way to get traffic to move is to slow it down, will be in the Village of Hamburg next Monday.
He will walk down Buffalo and Main streets, strolling through the four roundabouts that were installed as part of the $23 million reconstruction. He will watch as vehicles travel through intersections more quickly, yet also more calmly and safely, than they did when there were traffic signals governing them.
“I’ve been dying to get up here and see this project. I’ve got people coming over from Michigan to see it,” Burden said in a cell phone interview as he changed planes in Phoenix last week. “It is truly amazing this number of roundabouts got built.”
Accompanying Burden will be a reporter who has been shadowing him for several months for a feature in “Reader’s Digest.”
At the beginning of 2002, the state DOT was planning to make Main Street a two-lane highway with parking, with turn lanes likely at the intersections of Lake, Center and Buffalo streets. The state was trying to decide whether Buffalo should be three or four lanes.
Around that time, former Mayor John S. Thomas and other officials brought in Burden, the founder and head of Walkable Communities, a nonprofit organization formed to promote “walkability.” Burden presented his ideas about ways to calm traffic and make areas more pedestrian- friendly. His ideas got a warm reception from the community, and the DOT’s consultant hired Burden to work on more in-depth plans for Hamburg.
It was a turning point for the community.
“Suddenly, in the spring of 2002, not only are they changing their mind, but paying for the guy we like,” recalled Village Trustee Michael Cerrone, who was not on the Village Board at the time.
“We had some real naysayers inside the DOT. I think they realized this community is serious,” Burden said.
He said roundabouts work because they are designed to slow traffic down.
“Once they slow the traffic down, all of human performance changes. There is more time to see, to respond correctly,” he said. “By bringing the speed down, they create the most safe possible conditions.”
Because of the approach path, roundabouts force the motorist to look in the only direction from which a threat could come: the left. In a traditional intersection, a motorist must check all directions, and proceed on the faith that all other motorists will behave properly, he said.
It’s not just the roundabouts that changed Hamburg. Burden said the process he used to involve residents through charettes, or community design sessions, activated the community.
“Our nation is in a transformation. We’ve been building a lot of the wrong stuff for the wrong reasons for a long time,” he said.
And Hamburg, he said, can be an inspiration for the entire nation to build the right stuff.
bobrien@buffnews.com
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