SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Angie Schmitt writes in Streetsblog USA that city streets with the widest lanes — 12 feet or wider — are associated with greater crash rates and higher impact speeds and that there is hard evidence that wider lanes increase risk on city streets. Dewan Masud Karim conducted a wide-ranging review of existing research as well as an examination of crash databases in two cities, taking into consideration 190 randomly selected intersections in Tokyo and 70 in Toronto. Looking at the crash databases, Karim found that collision rates escalate as lane widths exceed about 10.5 feet. According to Karim "human behavior is impacted by the street environment, and narrower lanes in urban areas result in less aggressive driving and more ability to slow or stop a vehicle over a short distance to avoid collision. Designers of streets can utilize the “unused space” to provide an enhanced public realm, including cycling facilities and wider sidewalks, or to save money on the asphalt not used by motorists." Karim concluded that there is a sweet spot for lane widths on city streets, between about 10 and 10.5 feet.
According to Jeff Speck the fundamental error that underlies the practice of traffic engineering is an outright refusal to acknowledge that human behavior is impacted by its environment and it applies to safety planning, as traffic engineers, designing for the drunk who's texting at midnight, widen our city streets so that the things that drivers might hit are further away. "When lanes are built too wide, many bad things happen. In a sentence: pedestrians are forced to walk further across streets on which cars are moving too fast and bikes don't fit," writes Speck adding that a pedestrian hit by a car traveling 30 mph at the time of impact is between seven and nine times as likely to be killed as one hit by a car traveling 20 mph This tremendously sharp upward fatality curve means that, at urban motoring speeds, every single mile per hour counts. "Every urban 12-foot lane that is not narrowed to 10 feet represents a form of criminal negligence; every injury and death, perhaps avoidable, not avoided—by choice."
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 04 2015, @12:57PM
Regular commuting routes should be done on the subway, by express bus, or light rail. If you live in an urban area with sufficient density, commuting by bike trumps even those. Commuting by car is madness.
Engineering roads to be narrower and safer is better for everyone, drivers included. When the road is so wide and design too permissive, risk-taking drivers produce chaotic traffic and accidents that are constantly stressful and dangerous for risk-averse drivers. The result is traffic moves worse through such areas. NYC has started re-engineering its roads along these lines, and as a pedestrian, cyclist, and driver the payoff has been instant for all three modes of travel. The lights have been re-timed so that if you go a constant 23mph you hit all greens in your car, which is beyond wonderful--no more jack-rabbit starts, slaloming between lanes to beat lights, etc. The bikes have their own protected lane, which makes a huge difference if you're a new cyclist. Pedestrians get to not be run down by speeding SUVs.
The only ones who lose are gearheads in their muscle cars, you know, the guys who pull up next to you at stoplights and rev their engines? Personally, it puts a smile on my face if traffic calming frustrates the hell out of those guys.
Washington DC delenda est.