what a well written and thought provoking article; i love articles on technical topics that feel like art.
Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
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Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#12I used to think shared space was a great alternative to car-centric streets but after reading David Hembrow's blog about bicycling in the Netherlands for a while it's clear that shared space is just a half-measure. If you want a society where people other than (mostly male) daredevils in their 20s and 30s can cycle then you need segregated biking facilities. Holland's percent of trips by bike (modal share) is around…
What definitely does not work is drawing cyclist lanes onto the road. In Germany at least I think for a while it was believed that cycling lanes should be drawn on the roads rather than on the sideway. The result is that the cycling lanes become very dangerous, because car use them for short term parking all the time (it is not unusual to have a parking car every 100 meters). That would mean cycling around the car an…
I don't see why this is a big deal. Philadelphia has some recently added cycling lanes that I use all the time. If a car is parked you just look and cautiously veer around it. Sometimes you have to wait for a few seconds if there's heavy traffic and the space is narrow. But usually there's even enough room to get around a car without actually going back into the normal lane, since our bike lanes are converted from fully sized car lanes, which are bigger than cars.
And of course people park in them short-term with their hazards on. I'm not sure whether it's illegal or not (in Philly people park with impunity long-term in the turn lanes sometimes). But if it is it shouldn't be, there's no better alternative. Park in the non-bike lane, and make other cars go around them into the bike lane? No idling at all?
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#13So local traffic knows local roads? Signs and indicators are for people who are not from the area.
It's a long article and I didn't read all of it, but the changes they made seem more fundamental than that: A year after the change, the results of this “extreme makeover” were striking: Not only had congestion decreased in the intersection—buses spent less time waiting to get through, for example—but there were half as many accidents, even though total car traffic was up by a third. Students from a local engineering…
So if one would believe in a universal "fair trade" principle, the cost you pay for security and fluidity is heightened attention from the participants in traffic. One would wonder how well would this scale: if drivers had to pay the same attention to every intersection, how long before they would start making mistakes?
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#14I have one doubt about this idea. It might be possible that it only works because such "naked" roads are rare and thus prompt a (temporary) raise in drivers' alertness. Even the article provides a hint in this direction: "They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure…
You have it EXACTLY right. Most Indian roads have exactly this sort of system in place, so it's a pretty good comparison.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-is-worlds-roa...
Not so great of an example.
The model is like every classic "We turned up the lights and people became more productive. And then we turned down the lights and they became more productive. And then..." It's flawed.
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#15Morro Bay, CA, is a small town that replaced a freeway offramp/frontage road 4-way stop intersection with a roundabout. Transit time through the intersection improved because you no-longer had to stop and wait for your turn. It seems like a good model for low to moderate volume intersections. Flow is increased and speed is reduced.
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#16I have one doubt about this idea. It might be possible that it only works because such "naked" roads are rare and thus prompt a (temporary) raise in drivers' alertness. Even the article provides a hint in this direction: "They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure…
The other major possibility is the road markings where distracting drivers. Understanding the rules while driving is more complex than simply not hitting people.
I would much rather someone trying to make a U turn thinking “Is this safe?” vs. “What does the sign say?”
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#17I used to think shared space was a great alternative to car-centric streets but after reading David Hembrow's blog about bicycling in the Netherlands for a while it's clear that shared space is just a half-measure. If you want a society where people other than (mostly male) daredevils in their 20s and 30s can cycle then you need segregated biking facilities. Holland's percent of trips by bike (modal share) is around…
This is absolutely correct. The cycle lanes in Amsterdam took up relatively little space, had physical dividers, and at busy intersections there would be separate small traffic lights for cyclists - they get the green light about 10 seconds before the cars, which is usually enough time to get through the intersection and makes life easier for both cyclists and drivers.
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#18I have one doubt about this idea. It might be possible that it only works because such "naked" roads are rare and thus prompt a (temporary) raise in drivers' alertness. Even the article provides a hint in this direction: "They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure…
What I got from the article was not that naked roads should be everywhere, but actually that they absolutely shouldn't be everywhere. They should, however, be considered, as should a great many other possibilities, in the context of the specific environment that a traffic engineer is designing for. Instead we too often see a bias towards signs and signals and too much copy+paste of what has been done elsewhere.
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#19I have one doubt about this idea. It might be possible that it only works because such "naked" roads are rare and thus prompt a (temporary) raise in drivers' alertness. Even the article provides a hint in this direction: "They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure…
You have it EXACTLY right. Most Indian roads have exactly this sort of system in place, so it's a pretty good comparison. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-is-worlds-roa... Not so great of an example. The model is like every classic "We turned up the lights and people became more productive. And then we turned down the lights and they became more productive. And then..." It's flawed.
parent is referencing the Hawthorne Effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#20I have one doubt about this idea. It might be possible that it only works because such "naked" roads are rare and thus prompt a (temporary) raise in drivers' alertness. Even the article provides a hint in this direction: "They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure…
Maybe temporary in the sense that once the driver is out of the naked area, back to the "forgiving road" where any obstacle that might possibly hinder the flow of speeding automotives has been removed, the alertness probably falls back to zero again.
I don't think it's temporary in the sense that everything goes nicely for the first year and then everyone gets back to normal and accidents increase again.
I think that once you're sloshing through flocks of living people with your car and never get a chance to actually clear your way and speed up over 10-20km/h, I suspect that you will always become alert whenever you hit that area.
Conversely, walking around in an area where there are 1.5 ton blocks of moving metal without ever getting a chance to actually become absorbed in your thoughts and ignore the environment that you're in all together, you'll certainly feel less secure because you never know what's coming next and from where.
Because there's no "known" in the equation and speeds are forcibly slow, people are both more careful and more able to stop their vehicles before anything happens.