Walk (and bike) your main streets
Why Regent Street really should rethink the value of parking at the expense of space for non-drivers
I’m posting more this month to raise awareness for the Strongest Town Contest, in which Madison is competing. Round 1 voting ends Friday at 9am central. Please consider voting for Madison!
I went for a bike ride this weekend to treasure the false spring we have in Madison. It was almost 60 degrees, sunny, and just a tad windy (but doable). It can be so easy to forget how far you’ve gone when you’re just ecstatic to be out of your living room enjoying the outdoors. This was just over 27 miles.
We are expecting 6-8 inches of snow this upcoming weekend, so last weekend (and yesterday) was the time to enjoy the wonderful weather.
On this bike ride, I got hungry. It was just before lunch. I had visited Level 5 Donuts on Atwood the weekend prior and thought they were pretty incredible. The flavors are unique (my favorites were Shirley Temple and Blueberry Lemon) and the donut has a great texture. My friend had not been, so as we approached the north side of Lake Monona we figured this was the perfect time to stop by1.
Level 5 Donuts is located on a “main street” (Atwood Avenue) in Madison home to Barrymore theater, several other bakeries, and great restaurants. It’s a convenient area to be when you want to snack.
I bring this up because most of the time I’m not going to drive 5, 10, 20, or 30 minutes for a snack. I might for lunch or dinner, but I’m not going to do it consistently. I stopped here because I was biking for leisure and recreation and found myself craving a donut. I knew it was close by and convenient.
Was I inspired by Angie Schmitt’s most recent column? Yes, she makes a great point that unplanned trips in walkable areas result in experiencing more shops in that area.
There are a number of trips I made today that I wouldn’t have if I wouldn’t have happened to be walking past:
The donut shop
The book store
The vintage clothing store
The Dollar Store
The corner store
Atwood is not perfect; it’s wide to allow for parking. But cars drive slower in my (more limited) experience and it’s just off the Lake Loop bike path. There’s ample enough bike parking too. These are attributes that make me want to randomly stop and buy something. And I think Madison businesses would be better off trying to cater to the whimsical buyers like me drawn to a unique place instead of the planned drivers of Regent Street.
Regent should cater to the spontaneous
There was a long and arduous Transportation Commission last week that covered the proposed reconstruction of Regent Street. You can listen to all 4.5 hours here. If you aren’t familiar with it, I hinted towards the contention but ultimately you have two groups in opposition: pedestrians and bikers vs. commuters and businesses. I’m going to dub these groups “something new” and “business as usual”.
To give you a sense of its current state and why it should be reconstructed:
This is not a fun street to walk on. The sidewalks are narrow, no one remembers when peak-hour lanes are in effect (causing short merges for vehicles before they hit a parked car), and students are crossing constantly to get to and from the Vilas neighborhood for cheaper, off-campus housing. There are infrastructure concerns that made reconstruction a top priority and the City is taking advantage to redesign it.
There’s been a lot of jockeying for public opinion. At previous information meetings, survey results revealed the following preferences:
These show safety as the top priority, followed by pedestrians and traffic flow. The bottom considerations are parking and event operations, with bike comfort and sense of place in between.
The problem is a lot of these are at odds. You can’t get safety for all users with high amounts of traffic flow. There won’t be a sense of place without pedestrian amenities. I’m glad we can all agree that parking isn’t important.
Right?
RIGHT??
The Preferred Option
Staff is leaning towards option 3 (dubbed “the preferred option”), reducing Regent Street to two lanes but maintaining a lot of the existing parking. So are many of the “business as usual” crowd including the local business owners and UW Health clinic in the area. Bike advocates would prefer to see the option 2 that would add bike lanes to the street (they don’t exist currently) that simultaneously reduces crossing lengths exposed to vehicles.
UW Health had a spokesperson, Matt Phair, who seemed to recognize that option 1 (4 lanes of traffic) was not going to be viable and they might as well sue for peace via option 3.
“When UW Health evaluated this, our priorities were what’s good for patients and what’s good for employees. As you can imagine, a vast majority of our patients and staff travel to the clinic in the car, our top priority is to improve safe vehicle access. Regardless of what we all might hope and wish would happen, we’re always going to have patients traveling to our clinics from all over Dane County in a vehicle. That’s probably not going to change for a long time.
The second priority is for a pedestrian friendly street, it was a priority for our staff in particular… we want to see this street continue to be a vibrant one… where it’s safe to walk to restaurants and shops after work or during a break. And they also want to feel as they drive to/from home and work that pedestrians are safe as they go through the corridor.
Parking is really important for small business owners.”
And I can’t help but feel like this is a win. This is how I described it at our Local Conversation (LC) in February: we fought hard for making Willy Street two lanes, we showed it was workable, and staff recognized we could do the same with Regent Street. Staff also makes a lot of points:
“28’ is the magic number. We cannot go narrow than that. 28’ between curbs or parked vehicles.” - Tom Mohr on emergency vehicle requirements
There are over 20,000 vehicles/day entering and exiting Regent Street from Park Street
There’s an existing bike network option with the Southwest Commuter Path (to the ‘Bike Mafia’: how about we make this path better instead?)2
There are going to be redevelopments here in the future
But after my bike ride this weekend, I can’t help but feel like we are being shortsighted here. I can’t meaningfully predict knock-on effects for every decision or explain why we should reevaluate these decisions and specifically how we made them, but I’m going to call it out.
Like I described on my bike ride, walkers and bikers are more likely to frequent and spend at local businesses that are accessible. I’m not driving to Level 5 Donuts every weekend but I will seriously consider it any time I bike the Lake Loop!
By the same measure, businesses usually overvalue parking spaces and catering to drivers. Especially when they don’t turnover the parking spots. This would be a great opportunity to enable a Parking Benefit District and make the area even more attractive for business. Parking spots don’t draw people, interesting (and safe) places do.
This will be controversial, but UW Health needs to either bear the cost of the high cost of parking they are burdening the City with or they need to incentivize their patients and employees not to drive and remove the parking. This is the central core of Madison and we should not kowtow to the convenience of drivers. I’m not saying they can’t drive here, but is it unreasonable to ask them to drive slower? To have to pay for parking (Street View shows no payment required)? 20 S Park Street (where the clinic is) pays less in taxes than the Qdoba/Apartment complex directly across the street ($222,000 vs. $257,000) despite using 6x the amount of land! The staff recognizes that having a vibrant street is an incredible perk. Making it easier for private vehicles to get in and out makes it less vibrant.
Our LC is looking into the 28’ remark but the Meriter Hospital is a Level IV trauma center, that should be used to stabilize patients until they can get to a Level II center. The nice thing is there’s one just down the street (I marked it with the bigger circle)! There still might be concern for ambulances or fire trucks coming from the West side near Monroe Street, but I think we need to have a serious conversation about traffic fatalities and how wide roads (seemingly for emergency vehicles in this situation) contribute to the problem. Madison Fire dispatches engines all the time (over 30,000 times in 2024) despite responding to EMS emergencies 67% of the time. This might be a scenario where we aren’t burning the village to save it, but instead leaving them vulnerable to multi-ton vehicles driving recklessly3.
Driving isn’t everything
I won’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. The “business as usual” team is moving closer towards better pedestrian infrastructure. “Something new” can walk away proud knowing the preferred option likely wouldn’t have happened 5 years ago. It will be better for the community—residents and businesses alike. But I’m still perplexed by this comment from staff:
There’s a part of it where it’s good to funnel people into one crossing, rather than all over (in reference to a question about not adding mid-block crossing)
This mindset is still too focused on vehicle throughput. Regent Street, as a place where apartment buildings are going up fast and business is expanding, should be safe enough to cross at any point. Like the Dutch cities I got to experience, cars should defer to people. Bikes would be able to safely ride in front of the storefronts, window shopping until deciding at a moment’s notice to stop in and buy a donut. The street would be easy to shutdown for Football Saturdays to avoid messes like this:
But that’s the remaining mission for our Local Conversation. Staff is allowing for streateries. Parking doesn’t need to be required. We can show businesses that it’s the foot and pedal traffic that brings most of the energy that allows for prosperity. Bike facilities likely won’t be introduced now, but in a decade, who knows?
Progress is incremental, we just need to keep pushing forward.
Remember to vote in the Strongest Town Competition!
I got the “Homer” this time: strawberry glaze with sprinkles. It was delicious!
To be fair I said the same thing at the LC
Not the first responders, the people driving the cars and trucks on the wider roads