« Evidence of geekiness | Main | Pretty pictures »
May 22, 2004
"Once you drive people off the street, they become less safe."
As someone whose driving has been restricted to the occasional use of a hire car for more than a decade now, and who lives in a very quiet suburban street with very little vehicular traffic, I haven't paid a great deal of attention to trends in the field of traffic calming. Which is why Linda Baker's Salon article describing a thoroughly counter-intuitive approach to traffic design caught my eye (NB: non-subscribers will be required to view a Flash advert before gaining access to the article):
The idea is that instead of setting up a demarcation between 'car territory' and 'pedestrian territory', you force all car drivers, cyclists and pedestrians to share space. Applying these "woonerf principles" sounds like a deeply scary prospect, but apparently this approach has been applied in Holland and Denmark for some years and the evidence is that it can work.It's rush hour, and I am standing at the corner of Zhuhui and Renmin Road, a four-lane intersection in Suzhou, China. Ignoring the red light, a couple of taxis and a dozen bicycles are headed straight for a huge mass of cyclists, cars, pedicabs and mopeds that are turning left in front of me. Cringing, I anticipate a collision. Like a flock of migrating birds, however, the mass changes formation. A space opens up, the taxis and bicycles move in, and hundreds of commuters continue down the street, unperturbed and fatality free.
In Suzhou, the traffic rules are simple. "There are no rules," as one local told me. A city of 2.2 million people, Suzhou has 500,000 cars and 900,000 bicycles, not to mention hundreds of pedicabs, mopeds and assorted, quainter forms of transportation. Drivers of all modes pay little attention to the few traffic signals and weave wildly from one side of the street to another. Defying survival instincts, pedestrians have to barge between oncoming cars to cross the roads.
But here's the catch: During the 10 days I spent in Suzhou last fall, I didn't see a single accident. Really, not a single one. Nor was there any of the road rage one might expect given the anarchy that passes for traffic policy. And despite the obvious advantages that accrue to cars because of their size, no single transportation mode dominates the streets. On the contrary, the urban arterials are a communal mix of automobiles, cyclists, pedestrians, and small businesses such as inner-tube repairmen that set up shop directly in the right-of-way.
[...]
(Baker's article mentioned that the UK government had adopted a similar strategy, setting up 'Home Zone' pilot projects to apply woonerf principles. Indeed, having googled for more information I find that work has just started on a Home Zone project just a couple of miles from where I sit as I type this. Who knew?)
[Via the null device]
Posted by John at May 22, 2004 01:35 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://soreeyes.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1380