In Madison, Safer Streets Started With a Simple Test

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After a car went through the windows of Mother Fool coffee shop in Madison, Wisconsin, three times, a few members of the Madison Strong Towns Local Conversation group decided enough was enough. There had to be something they could do to slow traffic and make the street safer for people walking, employees, and customers. Upon close examination, they realized that a lane closest to the sidewalk usually reserved for parking was opened up during rush hour to make the street wider (a peak-hour driving lane) and drivers tended to respond to this extra space by speeding. 

At city meetings, they presented an idea: why not simply keep that lane for parking even during rush hour? It took some convincing across both city staff and city leaders, but eventually, they decided they could try something other than the usual process (waiting several years and getting the approval of an expensive consultant). They could simply put bags over the signs and allow the lane to serve for parking at all hours.

According to results shared by the city, most non-drivers were happy about improved safety: 

• 88% of pedestrians felt safety has improved or is the same.
• 80% support removal of the lanes, with bicyclists and transit users topping this list.
• Residents on Willy Street supported removing the lane at 76% and residents within two blocks were at 54%.
• Businesses were slightly less enthusiastic, but 65% cited no effect on business.

The city ultimately decided to keep the lane for parking only. This experiment is a perfect snapshot of how the city of Madison is learning to embrace incrementalism and try small ideas in response to their challenges. This kind of incrementalism is a powerful approach to community improvement because it’s low cost, allows participants to learn from experiments and adapt to the new information, and it's agile: there were no high-cost, permanent materials in this project, just bags slipped over signs. 

For Josh Olson, leader of Strong Towns Madison, this openness to incrementalism is critical to what makes Madison a Strong Town (and is part of the reason he nominated Madison for this year's Strongest Town Contest). “These discoveries are why we need more tests,” he writes on his Substack blog, "Counting Cranes." “If we hold onto assumptions like they are permanent, we will never learn or experience positive outcomes without extensive resources.” 

Their work is inspiring other organizations who have found city rules and regulations too confusing to try tactical ideas. For example, last September, Strong Towns Madison successfully hosted a Park(ing) Day event, a process that required not only securing a permit from the city but also securing their own barriers to block the street off, a rule they didn’t know about until the day of. A friend hitched a trailer to his bike and hauled the barriers to the event just in the nick of time. 

These successes are important not just for the tangible results they achieve but also because they represent a shift in mindset and culture. Typical interventions in these kinds of situations usually involve spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and several years on consultants and research. By learning to make small investments in temporary experiments, Madison is learning a new approach. 

Helping city leaders and residents become comfortable with this approach is neither easy nor quick, but it’s the foundational work that will pay off later. For example, when the head of the transportation department attended the Park(ing) Day event, he expressed a willingness to make the process easier once he heard about their challenges. Other organizations reached out upon seeing their success thanking them for doing it and asking for a roadmap so they could try, too. “Our hope is because we took this step and we fought through that red tape that other groups will be able to do this next year,” Olson said.  

Changing culture is an uphill battle for sure. But they are making progress. After successfully convincing the city to narrow one street by one lane, he’s seen the idea of street diet experiments become more popular at the city level and more readily embraced. For him, that’s the result of showing up, being polite and proposing a simple idea: let’s just try. 

That’s how Madison is becoming stronger, one experiment at a time.