Tag Archives: street design

freight vehicles and urban design

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Next City has a roundup of ideas for more efficiently accommodating freight vehicles in dense cities.

  • Better, cheaper (or even free to the user) public transit, so there aren’t so many cars clogging up the streets trucks need to drive on
  • “logistics hotels” where goods from many sources can be mixed, matched, and put on smaller vehicles appropriate to city streets (this is kind of how a port works?)
  • “design infrastructure like intersections and bus lanes with interactions between freight activity and vulnerable road users, like children, in mind” (sounds good, if a bit non-specific
  • Design trucks so they just aren’t so dangerous
  • Better allocate curb space to get more deliveries out of fewer vehicles

I have a few more ideas.

  • Don’t forget some kind of temporary parking for contractors and delivery people serving urban customers. It doesn’t have to be free, but it should be reservable.
  • Don’t forget garbage trucks, unless we are going to think of a better way to deal with garbage or get rid of garbage entirely.
  • Alleys can work well for trash and deliveries, if they are designed with that purpose in mind. They can provide play space and just generally space for people to spread out the rest of the time (but NOT if they are just a bunch of garage entryways).
  • I still want my robot deliveries, both ground and air! In my city though, robots using the sidewalks for deliveries will need them to be in a better state of repair, and that won’t happen because sidewalks are technically the responsibility of homeowners, many of whom are poor and/or don’t even know the sidewalks are their responsibility. On the few streets with incompetently designed, unenforced, and unmaintained bike lanes, the robots’ wheels and gears will get all gummed up with the blood of children and old people who believed the mayor’s promises to build safe protected bike lanes like they have in Europe.
  • I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. COPY DUTCH STREET DESIGN NOW!!! Just don’t let it go to their heads, the smug bastards…

August 2020 in Review

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Goodbye summer, hello fall (or do you prefer to say autumn?) in this weird and consequential year.

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • We just had the 15-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a major regional crisis that federal, state, and local governments failed to competently prepare for or respond to. People died, and decades later the recovery is incomplete. Coronavirus proves we learned nothing, as it is unfolding in a similar way on a much larger and longer scale. There are many potential crises ahead that we need to prepare for today, not least the inundation of major cities. I had a look at the Democratic and (absence of a) Republican platforms, and there is not enough substance in either when it comes to identifying and preparing for the risks ahead.

Most hopeful story:

  • Automatic stabilizers might be boring but they could have helped the economy in the coronavirus crisis. Congress, you failed us again but you can get this done before the next crisis.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • Vehicle miles traveled have crashed during the coronavirus crisis. Vehicle-related deaths have decreased, but deaths per mile driven have increased, most likely because people drive faster when there is less traffic, absent safe street designs which we don’t do in the U.S. Vehicle miles will rebound, but an interesting question is whether they will rebound short of where they were. One study predicts about 10% lower. This accounts for all the commuting and shopping trips that won’t be taken, but also the increase in deliveries and truck traffic you might expect as a result. It makes sense – people worry about delivery vehicles, but if each parcel in the vehicle is a car trip to the store not taken, overall traffic should decrease. Even if every 5 parcels are a trip not taken, traffic should decrease. I don’t know the correct number, but you get the idea. Now, how long until people realize it is not worth paying and sacrificing space to have a car sitting there that they seldom use. How long before U.S. planners and engineers adopt best practices on street design that are proven to save lives elsewhere in the world?

traffic-related death during the shutdown

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The National Safety Council (a nonprofit group) has some numbers on deaths caused by cars during the coronavirus crisis.

Preliminary estimates from the National Safety Council based on May data from all 50 states indicate that for the third month in a row, road users in the U.S. were at a higher risk of dying from a motor vehicle crash. As reported in Injury Facts, the fatality rate per miles driven in May – when most of the country was deep in quarantine from the pandemic – jumped a staggering 23.5% compared to the previous year, despite far less traffic on the roads. The number of miles driven in May dropped 25.5% compared to the year prior. The increased rate comes in spite of an estimated 8% drop in the number of deaths for May compared to the prior year. Overall, the mileage death rate per 100 million vehicle miles driven was 1.47 in May compared to 1.19 in 2019.

National Safety Council

There are some questions you could ask, like how do the 2019 numbers compare to the average of the last 3 or 5 years. But I also know we have seen an unusual number of grisly pedestrian and bicyclist deaths in my city this year (these make the news, while people dying in highway accidents sadly aren’t even headline news because we are so used to and accepting of this totally unacceptable risk.) I think it is pretty obvious what is going on. Narrow lanes, trees, parked cars, and other traffic send a message to the human brain to slow down. For some reason, seeing human beings walking or bicycling causes some people to slow down, while others seem to be oblivious, reckless, or occasionally intentionally aggressive. Most of these people are not bad people the rest of the time. It just seems to be human nature to speed up when we see an open space in front of us. So decreasing traffic, in the absence of better design measures and consistent enforcement, won’t solve this problem. Education may help but doesn’t seem to reach everyone. I think design is the answer and I’ve said it before – just copy the Dutch street design manual and be done with it.

#unblockbikelanes

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Just following up on yesterday’s “paint and pray” post about ignorant, unsafe street designs killing people in New York City and Philadelphia. There is a Twitter hashtag called #unblockbikelanes. Maybe the Philadelphia Police and Philadelphia Parking Authority look at it on occasion. Maybe they don’t. Maybe the engineers at the Philadelphia Streets Department will be inspired to learn about safe street design. Maybe they won’t. Either way, it’s indisputable photographic evidence that may eventually have a variety of uses.

https://twitter.com/printtemps/status/702941757009326080

Resources for safe street design:

augmented reality on Google Street View

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Google is rolling out some augmented reality features intended to assist pedestrians in Street View.

The feature overlays a live video feed on the map. Directional arrows and street names appear on the video feed to provide more intuitive navigation and give the user a sense of exactly where they are and where they need to go.

June 2019 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • The world economy appears to be slowing, even though U.S. GDP is growing as the result of the post-2007 recovery finally taking hold, juiced by a heavy dose of pro-cyclical government spending. The worry is that if and when there is eventually a shock to the system, there will be little room for either fiscal or monetary policy to respond. Personally, the partisan in me is thinking any time before November 2020 is as good a time for any for a recession to hit the U.S. I am a couple decades from retirement, and picturing that bumper sticker “Lord, Just Give Me One More Bubble”. Of course, this is selfish thinking when there are many people close to retirement and many families struggling to get by out there. And short-term GDP growth is not the only metric. The U.S. is falling behind its developed peers on a wide range of metrics that matter to people lives, including infrastructure, health care costs and outcomes, life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, addiction, suicide, poverty, and hunger. And it’s not just that we are no longer in the lead on these metrics, we are below average and falling. Which is why I am leading the charge to Make America Average Again!

Most hopeful story:

  • There have been a number of serious proposals and plans for disarmament and world peace in the past, even since World War II. We have just forgotten about them or never heard of them.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • In technology news, Elon Musk is planning to launch thousands of satellites. And I learned a new acronym, DARQ: “distributed ledger technology (DLT), artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR) and quantum computing”. And in urban planning news, I am sick and tired of the Dutch just doing everything right.

 

Amsterdam

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Amsterdam is easily my favorite city that I have been to. The streets there are for people, and cars are just one of many ways to get around, and not the best way so not many people use them. They are not allowed to take up half the space in the city. There is public and political support for all this.

I used to think Philadelphia could be like Amsterdam. Of course, physically, it could anytime. Our enemies are ignorance and cynicism though, and I am less optimistic lately that these enemies can ever be overcome. The occasional visit to Amsterdam might be the best I can hope for, as long as it stays dry enough to visit (and if anybody can keep it dry, the Dutch will do that as long as it is possible. The Dutch are a bit smug, of course, but you have a right to be when you are pretty much doing everything right.)

NACTO intersection design guide

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The National Association of City Transportation Officials has a new guide for safe intersection design. I’m thinking about buying a few hundred printed copies and sending them to the local engineers, planners and politicians who have caused Philadelphia to fall well behind peer cities (and many cities that should not even be peer cities) in safe street infrastructure.

bike lanes need to be protected

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I’ve always felt that drivers are more reckless on streets with bike lanes. A new study confirms this. So bike lanes need to be separated and protected to be safe. This is especially acute where I live in Philadelphia, where we have faded, poorly marked bike lanes and vehicles constantly blocking the bike lanes causing bikers to merge in and out of sometimes fast moving, often angry traffic including trucks. Still, if I have to get hit by a car on a relatively slow residential street, I think I would rather be side-swiped rather than run over from behind. Riding with the flow of traffic scares me because if an inattentive driver hits you from behind while you are making a legal stop at a stop light or stop sign, you could very well die, whereas if you are sideswiped, you have a reasonable change to crash land on the curb or run into a parked car, pedestrian, or something else to absorb some energy and slow you down hopefully without killing you. None of these things should ever happen of course, it is just cowardly and ignorant politicians and bureaucrats who are putting their citizens and children at risk when solutions are available.

Oslo has removed onstreet parking

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Oslo has apparently removed all or most onstreet parking.


“Cities, like Oslo, have been built for cars for several decades, and it’s about time we change it,” Hanne Marcussen, Oslo’s vice mayor of urban development, said in an email. “I think it is important that we all think about what kind of cities we want to live in. I am certain that when people imagine their ideal city, it would not be a dream of polluted air, cars jammed in endless traffic, or streets filled up with parked cars.”

To help support the shift, the city made “massive improvements in public transport and making cycling safe and comfortable,” says Rune Gjøs, Oslo’s head of cycling. The city is adding new trams and metro lines and more frequent departures, and lowering the cost of tickets. For the last few years, the city has also been quickly building out a better-connected bike network, converting parking to bright-red bike lanes. It handed out grants to help citizens buy electric bikes. The city bike-share system has quickly grown, tripling to nearly 3 million trips a year between 2015 and 2018.

As more people bike, that opens up room on overcrowded public transit. “Usually when you have these discussions you say, ‘Oh, we need bikes to replace cars,’ but there’s a missing link there, and that’s public transit,” says Bentsen. “What we see is that actually we take people out of the bus and onto the bike and walking, which leaves room for people to leave their car and take the bus.”

What, no entitlement to use part of the public realm to store my car for free?