What is a Shared Street?
aka The Woonerf
A shared street is a space designed for people where cars are allowed to drive rather that a street for cars where people are allowed walk. Shared streets put the safety and comfort of people ahead of driver convenience. Traffic speeds are maintained by design, not speed limit signs.
Shared streets are flexible and can be dynamic and changing. Often they can host street fairs and farmers markets, sometimes without even closing to traffic. Shared streets have more activation potential (important for creating draw and dwell in commercial districts) since pedestrians activate public spaces by making people feel more comfortable. And without boundaries pedestrians are free to activate the entire space, not just the sidewalks.
Traffic deactivates public spaces by making spaces hostile to people. Car-dominated streets require driving lanes for cars, sidewalks for pedestrians, bike lanes for--oops, we've run out of space.
Shared streets have room for things that don’t fit on a city sidewalk. A shared street may not even need a barricade before it is ready for a street fair. Restaurant seating can spill out into the street without stopping traffic flow. And so on. Typical American streets clear lanes for cars to travel at speed. Under these conditions, there isn't room for anything else. It wouldn't be safe.
Vibrant public spaces bring us together. Here, like nowhere else, we see each other and are seen by our community.
  
Shared street in the Haga District Gothenberg, Sweden (Photo by Mina Adsit - 2019)
It is important to note that designing streets for slow traffic creates safer conditions. Shared streets see relatively few accidents despite large volumes of activity and since these occur at slow speeds, injuries and property damage are generally minor or non-existent. Indeed, anything that reduces vehicle dominance increases safety.
The Minneapolis' Complete Streets Checklist for the Logan Park Industrial street redesign project states, "25 total crashes in most recent 6.5 years of data analyzed - majority of crashes involved single vehicle crashes (typically parking related)” The data showed just one collision involving a pedestrian. (source)
SHARED STREET DESIGN
The driving surface of a shared street is often different from the surrounding streets. The change helps create driver engagement. This tells drivers that they have entered a new kind of street. Smooth asphalt might become brick pavers, for example. Not only can a driver see that a brick street is different from a tar street, they can feel the difference as their tires drive over the bricks. And they can feel when they are driving faster or slower.
Raised entrances (like driving into a parking lot or alley) or some other significant traffic calming element (speed bumps) can also communicate to drivers that they are leaving the typical through-street and the driving conditions have changed.
There are no curbs on shared streets (usually), nothing to signal that pedestrians need to be here and not there, for example. Curbs are physical barriers that help protect pedestrians from fast moving traffic. This is not necessary on a shared street as drivers move at speeds that are safe for pedestrians (think alley speed). Curbs help clear a path for cars and enforce traffic domination. If drivers believe they are unlikely to encounter a pedestrian (or other obstruction) they are more likely to be comfortable driving faster.
In this way shared streets are just wide sidewalks. They lack other markers that tell pedestrians or drivers where to be. Traffic ambiguity is an asset on a shared street. It makes drivers just a bit nervous and causes them to pay more attention. A level road surface (with minor slopes for drainage) and no particular pathways offers pedestrians access to the WHOLE street. If there is parking, a shared street should probably have markings for this. Otherwise, pedestrians (and drivers) should feel able to move unrestricted.
The shared street behind the Pillsbury A Mill with markings only for parking (2024)
A shared street can certainly contain different pavements types for texture and color, but these surface changes should not limit user access. In fact, color and texture changes to a driving surface often work to further calm traffic.
Limited traffic signage keeps drivers scanning. Signage takes attention away from the road. When the road design doesn’t tell you where to go, you have to look for other clues. This also increases driver engagement. Any signage should be at or just above pedestrian level to keep drivers' eyes where they should be.
Narrow driving lanes/areas give cars less room to pick up speed. Even though there is technically be enough room for a car to fit, tight spaces make drivers more aware of their speed relative to fixed objects and it becomes uncomfortable to drive faster. This is also called edge friction.
Most important, shared streets must be walkable streets. This means they have to be places that people want to be. They have to be comfortable and interesting. These are not through-streets, they have to be or include destinations.
A hundred years ago all American streets were shared streets. They carried walkers and horse carts and trollies and cars and everything else. Lane markers came later. Traffic signals came later. Sidewalks came later. Traffic domination over everything else came later.
Everyone shared the same space. Everyone had access to the whole space. And it worked. It worked great. And it still works great on old streets that have somehow been spared from the modern municipal playbook.
Almost every street in the country has been systematically rebuilt to favor driver convenience and vehicles per hour (VPH). Making streets efficient for traffic flow requires organizing walking and driving into separate spaces and essentially banishing everything else. There just isn’t room. We try to squeeze bicycles in here and there. If we want to put up a food stand or a little market, the whole street has to be closed for safety.
In American, that’s almost all we have now. Most of us can’t conceive of walkable spaces free from the threat of traffic. We travel to the old European cities to walk among their street stalls. Walkable urban farmers markets are a delightful weekend novelty in American cities, swept away by important workday traffic.
But we can have it all. Shared streets are dynamic and flexible spaces that give us more than traffic flow.
This is the magic of a shared street. There is room for EVERYTHING! It can’t all happen at once, but so much of it can coexist, more than you would think. Pedestrians and cars can share the same place at the same time. When cars move at jogging speed, everyone can see everyone else and adjust.
We don’t need a lane for this way, a sidewalk for pedestrians, and another place for bikes and so on until we've run out of space. We only need this kind of structure when cars are moving so fast as to be dangerous. If we have slow cars, there is room for everything.
|
