Flibbertigibbet

This One is for the Inspector

Reuters: Town ditches traffic lights to cut accidents

BERLIN (Reuters) - A town council in Germany has decided the best way of improving road safety is to remove all traffic lights and stop signs downtown.

From September 12, all traffic controls will disappear from the center of the western town of Bohmte to try to reduce accidents and make life easier for pedestrians.

In an area used by 13,500 cars every day, drivers and pedestrians will enjoy equal right of way, Klaus Goedejohann, the town's mayor, told Reuters.

"Traffic will no longer be dominant," he said.

The article goes on to discuss the work of Hans Monderman of whom I read in Wired Magazine a while back.

Monderman advocates the creation of "shared spaces" in which cars and pedestrians all share the same space.

Monderman's ideas have already been implemented in the town of Drachten in the north of the Netherlands, where all stop lights, traffic signs, pavements, and street markings have gone.

"It's been very successful there," Goedejohann said, adding that accidents in Drachten had been reduced significantly.

I love the argument made by the opposition as cited in the article:

"Just because it worked in the Netherlands doesn't mean it will work here," said Werner Koeppe, a road specialist at Berlin's Technical Traffic Institute.

In the article I read about Hans Monderman, he had "designed" this round-about where there wasn't even a curb to delineate the road and sidewalk. Here's an excerpt from the Wired article:

Riding in his green Saab, we glide into Drachten, a 17th-century village that has grown into a bustling town of more than 40,000. We pass by the performing arts center, and suddenly, there it is: the Intersection. It's the confluence of two busy two-lane roads that handle 20,000 cars a day, plus thousands of bicyclists and pedestrians. Several years ago, Monderman ripped out all the traditional instruments used by traffic engineers to influence driver behavior - traffic lights, road markings, and some pedestrian crossings - and in their place created a roundabout, or traffic circle. The circle is remarkable for what it doesn't contain: signs or signals telling drivers how fast to go, who has the right-of-way, or how to behave. There are no lane markers or curbs separating street and sidewalk, so it's unclear exactly where the car zone ends and the pedestrian zone begins. To an approaching driver, the intersection is utterly ambiguous - and that's the point.

Another money quote:

"I think the future of transportation in our cities is slowing down the roads," says Ian Lockwood, the transportation manager for West Palm Beach during the project and now a transportation and design consultant. "When you try to speed things up, the system tends to fail, and then you're stuck with a design that moves traffic inefficiently and is hostile to pedestrians and human exchange."

Oo! Oo! Here's a quote also from the Wired article for the Inspector here:

"What we really need is a complete paradigm shift in traffic engineering and city planning to break away from the conventional ideas that have got us in this mess. There's still this notion that we should build big roads everywhere because the car represents personal freedom. Well, that's bullshit. The truth is that most people are prisoners of their cars."

Emphasis added for effect.

If you know me and have observed me closely, you'll know that I often advocate "following the rules" for the simple goal of getting things to run quickly, easily, and efficiently. I like people to pay attention to the road and drive in such a way that reduces congestion and increases traffic flow, both for cars and pedestrians.

Things that irritate me to the extreme are litterbugs, people who walk slowly up the middle of the stairs (instead of off to the side), people who don't move to the middle of the subway car, people who drive slowing in the fast lane, people who leave their trash in the movie theater, cars that block the crosswalk out of sheer indecision, pedestrians who block car traffic, people who stop and talk in doorways or main footpaths... the list goes on and on.

I just like things to work well.

So, I don't actually oppose this whole "no signs" jazz in principle, but it sounds really stupid at first blush.

The point of roads IS so that cars can move safely and easily from one place to another and the point of cars is so that people can move quickly from place to place. It seems like if the roads make the cars go more slowly, then the roads aren't really serving their purpose.

I'm not an expert on these things, so I really don't know whether or not these street designs are actually more efficient.

Efficiency is defined as the ratio of output to input. In an intersection, it seems like you'd define efficiency in terms of incoming and outgoing traffic over time. All the people in these discussions seem to focus on collisions. Collisions don't seem to be a measure of efficiency, though.

And at no point do they tell us what they mean by efficiency.

They seem to be focused on pedestrians having a delightful walk through traffic. Is that really the point? Really? I mean, do you design streets so that people can just wander into traffic without getting hit? I hope not, but I guess there are some situations where you might want that to be the case.

I wish I knew more about traffic and street design to speak more about this. I'm just posting it because we've been discussing the economic leverage that well-designed streets add to suburban and urban development. According to that guy in West Palm Beach, the slow traffic has resulted in more businesses developing along streets and pedestrians showing up. I don't know if that is a good thing -- given that the government is involved, I'm inclined to think it's a bad thing.

Anyway, just adding some fuel to the fire here.