Actually the safest way to make cities less dangerous is to just ban people from going outside.
Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic
91–100 of 174 posts
Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic
#92Yes banning left turns will definitely stop drivers from illegal left turns /s
Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic
#93One of the best ways to eliminate left turns is to replace four way intersections with roundabouts. This has the advantage of working even where there isn’t a grid to facilitate the “3 right turns” strategy. For a great description of why this is so effective, see the recent freakonomics podcast: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/roundabouts/
As a French, it's really surprising to see how other people from other countries aren't used to roundabouts. I really like how diverse roundabouts are here. Some are arranged like gardens, some have flowers, some have sculptures, some have decorations made by the local school. A funny anecdote: we used to go to Pontarlier from time to time because our grandparents had a house here. Every time we went, we saw that [1]…
Is that a thumb?!
Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic
#94Actually to have safer cities remove cars from the traffic equation. A city without cars will be safer and cleaner for pedestrians and bikes. Air quality will also be better.
Yes please! It's unfortunate that this article and so many others focus on how we can design roads to be safer and more convenient for drivers, often requiring larger traffic control devices that make cities even more unnavigable for the rest of us.
You know what's crazier the more I think about it, that the article doesn't even mention? With turn-on-red, and an abundance of intersections without dedicated left-turn signals, pedestrian crossings in America are rarely protected. Turners-on-red rarely come to a stop, and are usually looking to the left, meaning they don't notice a crossing pedestrian until the last minute. Same for left-turners, who are paying more attention to the opposite lane. When left-turners misjudge the speed of oncoming traffic, you can bet they'll sooner accelerate into a pedestrian in the crosswalk than allow the oncoming car to hit them.
I ran into this problem (or rather, this problem nearly ran into me) quite often in Atlanta, where many impatient drivers use neighborhood streets to leapfrog standstill highway traffic. On the bright side, the city is experimenting with scramble crossings, which feel quite a bit safer to me.
Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic
#95One of the best ways to eliminate left turns is to replace four way intersections with roundabouts. This has the advantage of working even where there isn’t a grid to facilitate the “3 right turns” strategy. For a great description of why this is so effective, see the recent freakonomics podcast: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/roundabouts/
Roundabouts in the busy city center would be terrible. Where roundabouts fit best is in intersections with low demand, because they have low capacity, and there's no reasonable way to increase capacity. If it's the urban core busy city center where there are skyscrapers right up to the lot line, there's no room for a roundabout unless you're willing to make 'round a bumps' or carve some footprint out of the buildings…
Roundabouts can be made to handle high-traffic - supplemented by stop lights if necessary - satellite view Tijuana for some examples.
The thing is until people are used to them - which can take years if not decades - they can be slower. And they can be hard to retrofit into older locations. In cities it may be better to turn streets to one way (making all turns “right turns” effectively).
Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am biased but why do we even need cars in the city center, or at the very least why should they be convenient? Could there not be a situation where you walk to the edges of the city center to pick up your car and leave from there? There are specific accessibility concerns that certainly need to be accounted for, but the idea that the average driver loses 20 minutes on a trip that should be 5-10 minutes doesn't seem…
I was waiting for this response. As someone who doesn’t live in the city center, and has no easy means of mass transportation to get there, my response is: fine I just won’t go then. You lose my money. In NYC or Chicago that’s probably not a big deal. In the vast majority of the rest of the US, that’s how you kill a city center. I can tell you in my case, given the homelessness issue that’s been getting worse the las…
> In the vast majority of the rest of the US
The cities in these places don't generally have the problems that the GP was talking about: the streets are mostly planned and overall car-friendly, and if you miss one turn there's likely a close opportunity to correct your route.
Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic
#97And right turns for those driving on the wrong side of the road. ;-)
Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic
#98One of the best ways to eliminate left turns is to replace four way intersections with roundabouts. This has the advantage of working even where there isn’t a grid to facilitate the “3 right turns” strategy. For a great description of why this is so effective, see the recent freakonomics podcast: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/roundabouts/
Two wrongs don't make a left, but 3 rights do.
Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic
#99Are there any stats that left turns are/how dangerous? Here most (at least the majority of media reports is about) cyclist die when a truck turns right.
The biggest problem with right turns are: 1. Free rights a uncontrolled right turns that don’t protect crossing cyclists and pedestrians through time based segregation. 2. No physical/grade segregation. Cyclists become invisible in blind spots during right turns because intersections are terribly designed to support anything other than cars. A well designed intersection puts cyclists in front of cars where they are v…
This looks good. Although I do not see how this can be done without tearing down 10% of a city.
Re: Remove left turns for less dangerous city traffic
#100One of the best ways to eliminate left turns is to replace four way intersections with roundabouts. This has the advantage of working even where there isn’t a grid to facilitate the “3 right turns” strategy. For a great description of why this is so effective, see the recent freakonomics podcast: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/roundabouts/
Two wrongs don't make a left, but 3 rights do.
Try that in this city :)
http://szczecinblog.pl/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/historyczn...
I've visited it a few years ago and I found myself accidently going in circles constantly :)