Making Streets Slower By Design September 06, 2009 | By Tom Condon

I should have known something was up when my real estate agent handed me a checkered flag. People drive too fast on my street. Cars zoom by until they reach a stop sign a couple of blocks away. I complained a couple of times to town hall when I moved in years ago, someone promised to look into it and nothing came of it.

Until two weeks ago. To someone's credit, town workers put up digital speed monitors in each direction that tell approaching drivers how fast they are going. The result has been amazing. People slow down.

My son and I were watching this last week before his departure for the world of higher education. "People can tell how fast they're going by looking at the speedometer. What is it about the 'Your Speed' sign that makes them slow down? Are they afraid someone will see them?" he asked.

I suspect that plays into it, but how about this: People don't think to look at the speedometer because they aren't consciously hitting the gas. They are invited to drive faster by the design of the road, and do so somewhat unconsciously.

This insight was dramatically presented in a Boston Globe essay last month by Mark Rosenberg, executive director of the Task Force for Global Health. Rosenberg told of finding a young female jogger lying in a road near death in Atlanta three years ago. The woman died as he tried to save her.

He wrote about the incident in the Atlanta newspaper and letters poured in. Half blamed the woman for being on the road at that early hour, the rest blamed the driver. No one blamed the road.

Rosenberg said he showed a photo of the road to friends from Sweden, who told him, "Your roads are designed to kill people."

Sweden has a program called Vision Zero, an effort to eradicate road traffic deaths. It involves a major rethinking of how roads are designed. For example, the Swedes place Mylar barriers down the center of two-lane roads, which effectively prevents head-on collisions.

Other tactics include lower speed limits, speed bumps and narrowing roads near intersections. The Swedes discerned that traffic lights increased the number of deaths because people often speed up when the light turns yellow, so they replaced lights at many intersections with traffic circles or rotaries, significantly lowering death rates as those intersections.

Rosenberg's essay brought an agree/disagree response from New Haven architect and planner Robert Orr, who's thought about this issue as well.

Orr said research supports the contention that road design causes far more fatalities than spacey pedestrians or bad drivers. But he disagreed with the notion of putting up rotaries, speed bumps and what have you, saying it would make New England towns look like "bumper-car amusement parks."

Orr cited findings by traffic engineer Peter Swift and UConn professor Norman Garrick that lane width is the single largest (by a huge factor) contributor to high traffic speeds, and therefore to accidents and fatalities.

Narrow the lane width, slow traffic down, and more people will live to see another day.

The underlying point here is that we don't have to accept 40,000 traffic fatalities a year as inevitable. There are steps that can be taken to slow traffic and save lives.

If a digital display can get people to slow down, that's a start. Unfortunately, they took the one on my street away a couple of days ago.

Name: ______/ Mr. Schwartz Earth Science
Period: ______Date: ______/ People or Cars? /10

Read the article from The Hartford Times.

1. Now, please tell me: What is the problem here?

2. What do people think is the cause?

3. What do people think is the solution?

4. If you were in charge of the roads in West Hartford, what might you do?

Part 2 - Fixing Bishops Corner

You are the city planner for West Hartford, a fictional city governed by Mayor-for-Life Schwartz. The city has just received a donation of 8 gazillion dollars, enough to redesign the once-thriving but now dead Bishops Corner.

Tonight,

Answer the questions to help you think about what is good and bad in the area, and how you might redesign it.

  1. Does the Corner seem to be friendlier towards people or cars? Why do you say so?
  1. Which part of the Corner is the most people-friendly? Why do you think so?
  1. Where are the people in this area? Where could they live?
  1. Look at the types of businesses in the center. Are they the kinds that people living in the center would use frequently? What other types of businesses might be good?
  1. Is the space in the area being used to the maximum, or is there “wasted space?” Explain.