Traffic Calming

Cars bring customers. Traffic chases them away.

Traffic is hostile to people. Not only do cars represent a physical threat to pedestrians, traffic noise sucks. When a commercial district is dominated by traffic, it hurts business. Uncomfortable shoppers spend less time and less money.

This isn't about eliminating cars. This is about putting people first.

Road design has more impact on traffic speed than speed limit signs. Most drivers let the road and the other cars on it tell them how fast to drive. And in America, we make it easy to drive fast. We make it feel safe to go over the speed limit. We offer drivers wide lanes with no curves. We push objects away from the roadside where they might provide a sense of how fast drivers are going. American roads tell drivers that everything is fine.

And it is fine for highways. Efficient roads with minimal distraction is actually a lot safer at higher speeds. But it's dangerous when pedestrians are added to the mix. And it's just not great to hang around places designed for speed.

Given that we live in a car dominated society, here are some ways to make our streets safer and more pleasant for people who have gotten out of their cars.

TRAFFIC CALMING TOOLS

Narrow lanes
Edge friction
No center lines
Pinch points
Bollards and bump-outs
Curves (chicanes)
Bricks, pavers, and other street surfaces
Daylit corners
Protected bikeways
Active pedestrian spaces
Street murals
Speed bumps
Traffic ambiguity - No curbs, no lane markers, minimal signage (woonerf/shared street)

Traffic is a tool for taking value away from one group and delivering it to another. Busy roads destroy property values because nobody wants to live next to traffic. Cars are amazing when you’re in them. They suck when you’re not.

And yet, American cities seem to value drivers more than anyone else. When congestion clogs our highways, we bulldoze homes and businesses to add more lanes. We could build a commuter rail line instead of 25 highway lanes, but we don’t. We put drivers first.

I suppose this comes in the name of commerce. Drivers bring money and labor to our businesses. And we must believe that they can do this more efficiently than the people who would use the trains, walk, or ride bikes. Or we think that traffic infrastructure simply delivers more people than any other transportation option could.

In most American cities, this is basically correct. Bikes and mass transit are for the people that can’t afford cars. And if the money is riding around in cars, we need to bend to traffic.

We can argue whether or not this is true. If it is, it’s cultural. Plenty of thriving cities in Europe are not dominated by cars. And New York, financial capital of America, has more subway stops than anywhere else in the world.

We pay dearly for our traffic. We pave some of our most valuable property. We pollute the places where most of our people live. As car owners, we send thousands of dollars a year to big auto and oil for the convenience of driving from door to door. In Northeast Minneapolis, we spend $100 million a year on our cars. We trade a lot of housing and public services and art and health care for the convenience of driving a car.

Of course, there is another way: people first street design. And it’s not just good for people, it’s good for business.

Walkable communities increase property values, local investment, neighborhood vitality, economic productivity, and employment rates while decreasing crime, maintenance costs (taxes), health care costs, and traffic congestion.

People spend more time in walkable neighborhoods because these places are just more pleasant. In a retail setting, this means people spend more money.

And the formula is simple: safety, noise, and space. Customers don’t like the threat of getting hit by a car. They don’t like have their sense of hearing dampened by overwhelming ambient traffic noise. And they do like strolling a street lined with storefronts rather than parking lots.

For safety, for capitalism, for people, city’s should have the following priorities:

CITY DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES
0 Safety*
1 Livability (traffic levels, speed, pavement area)
2 Pedestrian access
3 Bicycle access
4 Driver access
5 Parking

* Safety is non-negotiable. Without safety, we have nothing. There is no sense in working toward anything else until our people feel safe.