I’m a huge fan of the video series being put together on Streetfilms at the moment – about “moving beyond automobiles”. One recent video looks at traffic calming techniques – innovative ways of slowing down vehicles to make the road safer for pedestrians:
I really like narrow streets, as I have outlined in previous posts. Street width has an enormous impact on urban amenity, determining the extent to which cars dominate the environment and how attractive the street is to pedestrians and cyclists. I particularly like ideas of narrowing down the street at intersection points, rather than having the traditional wide radius turns – which let cars zip around corners at dangerously hight speeds.
Some of the more recent developments in Auckland have narrow streets, but much of the city is still built around 1960s engineering standards that placed cars ahead of people. Over time I hope that changes.
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Christchurch city traffic engineers are constantly being criticised for doing exactly what you suggest. I suspect thats because it always has to be someone else that is causing the problem so whenever the solution inconveniences us then it must automaticly be a wrong solution.
It will be interesting to see if the earthquake damage chicanes and speedbumps have reduced serious injuries or ACC mv claims in Chch.