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A dozen kids spent much of July with The Bureau creating The Secret Pop-Up Park. Close readers of past newsletters will know that this was our fourth street-design/placemaking summer camp with Briya Public Charter School. Some may even point out that it's the second summer in a row where 'secret' featured in the title. No apologies, we just love adding a little drama to our large-scale building projects and The Street Traffic Garden was such fun in 2017. For this year's cardboard-duct-tape-recyclables-paint creation, we commandeered an unloved courtyard and invited lots of guests to enjoy it in it's transformed state. As usual we did lots of planning, designing, building and painting as we came up with our park. We took a behind-the-scenes tour of The Wharf soliciting their design advice. We asked local playground contractors for building suggestions and toured their work in progress. Camp culminated in The Secret Pop-Up Park Ribboncutting where we showcased the project to an invited audience of parents, teachers, siblings and Briya students. We self-catered the event with our traditional menu: Rocky Road Squares, Construction Pie and Traffic Light Cookies plus a student-baked Dulce de Leche Roadway Cake (a crowd hit). Briya preschoolers and siblings had fun with camper-led activities such as the portable traffic garden, the table-top chalk traffic garden, our giant traffic light game and more.
Thanks to Briya for once again allowing us the freedom and facilities to have our kind of summer fun.
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The Bureau is part of the George Mason University team installing Traffic Gardens in two District of Columbia public schools. We're transforming both playgrounds into a set of streets and intersections complete with small-scale signs and challenge ramps. The work is funded by a Vision Zero grant from the District Department of Transportation. The Traffic Gardens have been designed to work with the school biking programs: 2nd grade PE bike education plus preschool balance bike play. For the second graders, the Traffic Garden will be an important tool before they take their new biking skills out onto city streets. Meanwhile, the 3-4 year olds get to develop safety awareness riding their balance bikes while also receiving classroom instruction and reinforcement through a companion curriculum.
The goal of the Vision Zero funding is to improve safety so George Mason University are conducting research to better understand how children learn through these tools. There has been lots of teacher, staff and student input and the hope is that the Traffic Gardens will become an intrinsic part of creative play at both schools. We are creating original curriculum so that teachers can deploy this new teaching tool over years to come. Installation should be taking place soon and then we'll be celebrating all those who played a role at the ribbon-cutting events.
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October saw the dedication of the Fauquier County Safety Town. This project came about after the Director of Parks & Recreation got in touch after reading about The Bureau in the VDOT newsletter in 2016. The Bureau and Torti Gallas + Partners have been jointly working with him in various capacities since. He had already identified an unloved basketball court as a possibility for a potential 'safety town'. The site actually had a lot going for it as it is a node of a walking/biking trail network (part rails-to-trails plus future trail extensions planned) and adjacent to a public playground/park area as well as a Headstart program. The facility is intended for use by the preschoolers while also available as a facility for community bike and safety education programs.
Next thing you know, it's a beautiful sunny day and lots of small people appear and there are speeches from elected officials and traffic light cupcakes. Here's some local reporting on the story where we make an appearance.
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The Bureau created design charrettes events for the two schools involved in the DC Traffic Garden project. Students learned about the upcoming plans and underlying design ideas and provided their input ideas through the engagement activities. The two events featured many hands-on activities related to different aspects of the design and involved almost 200 students. The charrette activities fostered a high level of hands on-direct engagement and discussion with individual students. Input from the students was subsequently deployed during the design workshop held to finalize the Traffic Garden layouts.
Here's a blog post on Traffic Gardens from Safe Routes to School National Partnership that includes a nice shot from one of the design charrettes as well as lots of good information about the value of traffic gardens as a tool for children's learning.
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We have had fun holding two Vision Zero Superhero school events in conjunction with Kori Johnson of Safe Routes to School National Partnership. Kori's superhero wrist cuff with reflective strip was a hit each time out: it's an easy engaging craft that leads directly to a conversation about making sure you are seen on the street and kids love wearing the cuffs they make. Meanwhile, Fionnuala deploys her Vision Zero Superhero photo booth plus a spin-the-wheel-to-learn-your Vision Zero Superhero name + superpower (e.g. visibility, x-ray vision, fly over streets, etc.). We have an on-going campaign on Twitter (@RoadsMovement) soliciting more superpowers for future events and have received the following so far from kid contributors: speed, flying, super-loud voice, arrester beam to put bad drivers in jail. Keep 'em coming kids. |
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Sadly, the time has come to retire The League of Sidewalk Superintendents Walking Salons as focus shifts to Traffic Garden design and educational programming. Walking Salons and Traffic Gardens are all aspects of the same mission: creating fun and interesting ways of seeing how the built world is put together and changes over time. We received fantastic help from the local archivist at DDOT and had fun digging in the Washington Post historic papers. The best part of all was the people who joined in and took time to put the streets under an historic microscope.
Here's a little memory of the group.
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There is a design divide in planning streets. Children, one of the most vulnerable groups in transportation, are often forgotten in the design and implementation of street infrastructure.
Fionnuala was part of a panel at the Walk Bike Place Conference presenting about the DC Traffic Garden Project which also covered the broader topic of children + design + streets. Co-presenters were Rick Holt of George Mason University and Mary Butcher, Torti Gallas + Partners. It is clear that, while previously over-looked, this topic is emerging as an important aspect of U.S. design.
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So far this year, The Bureau has visited twenty four miniature traffic towns and cities. We have been to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Georgia and Virginia and seen a range of traffic gardens, safety towns and safety villages of different types and operating models. Facility design has ranged from painted lines on a school playground (Richmond) to the half-sized streets and staffed comprehensive operations of Eisenhower Safety Town, NY and Cobb County Safety Village, GA. We have been very lucky to have spent time learning about the history and operation from some of the folks who run these facilities. In almost all cases, the facility is beloved in their community and many are serving thousands of local children annually. There is tremendous learning and education taking place in these miniature towns and cities and children look forward greatly to being part of these programs. It's most interesting seeing the design variations and we hope to come out with something useful on this topic in coming months.
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This fall, we created a two-lesson educator kit for the STEAM Saturday art program at The Hill School in Middleburg, Virginia. This is our third year creating fun classroom activities for the Saturday art teacher and her three class groups. Here at The Bureau HQ, we like to stay right on trend so lessons involved true (design) crime drama complete with mysterious codes & notes from Agent Q: Will they find the design drawings for the road diet or end up stuck with four lanes forever???
If you would like to receive a free traffic garden activity sampler kit (with a range of small crafting items), drop us a line at info@goodroadsmovement.com. On our way to the post office to mail the kits, we like to pay a visit to Bob Simon at his lakeside bench. Mr. Simon used to come in annually to a program that Fionnuala ran in the schools and here's a short video of his last visit in 2013 at age 99. |
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Hot off the presses is the NTSB report about pedestrian safety. After decades of decline, there has been a very worrisome climb in the rate of pedestrian deaths along our roads and this report makes important new recommendations targeted at top U.S. agencies. Back in 2016, Fionnuala gave testimony at the safety panel hearing convened as part of this investigation.
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Watch a short video about traffic gardens and The Bureau.
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