I stumbled (via Price Tags) across a really fantastic site earlier today which really highlights the difference that street width makes to the feel of a place – taking a number of streets in Los Angeles and manipulating the image to reduce the street width. Let’s take a look at a narrowed Sunset Boulevard:
And compare it to the real thing:
And now a narrowed version of the intersection of Ocean Ave and Santa Monica Boulevard, in Santa Monica:
Compared to the real thing:
While I’ve always been a fan of narrow streets, these images really show how narrowing down our roadways can have a hugely beneficial impact on the look and feel of our urban areas. While obviously we can’t easily narrow down every street and road, I think that there are some pretty compelling reasons to look to make our roadways as narrow as possible while still enabling them to do what we want. I know this approach will probably annoy traffic engineers who seem to like roads to be as wide as possible, but for some reason I often tend to find myself liking things which annoy traffic engineers.
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On behalf of the traffic engineers:
“You can’t do that because it’s against the rules”
“Do you know what the traffic model would say”
“What about the people that can’t live in the city and have no other choice but to drive”
Sorry, I am a traffic engineer, and those are lazy (and incorrect) answers – I agree that some would give them, but they can’t give them “on behalf of the traffic engineers”. Sadly, these are the answers POLTICIANS tend to use, particularly the last one.
Also, there are halfway house options too – such as providing solid median with trees and pedestrian crossings and reducing the speed environment, which can make even wide & heavy traffic-flow streets much more human.
The speed limit on the sign in the first pic should be lowered to something more appropriate as well. Maybe 20 or 25 mph.
Like this actual narrow road in Ponsonby posted at 50kph.
https://maps.google.co.nz/maps?q=ponsonby+road&hl=en&ll=-36.851534,174.745044&spn=0.001835,0.004128&sll=-40.799894,175.310128&sspn=56.132735,135.263672&t=h&hnear=Ponsonby+Rd,+Auckland+1011,+Auckland&z=19&layer=c&cbll=-36.851534,174.745044&panoid=MLFOY7EyZ_DyBek8j-thhA&cbp=12,73.44,,0,11.23
In streets that are narrow and/or designed for slow speeds, the SIGNED speed limits become more and more irrelevant.
The sign is only there because NZ, in it’s wisdom, declares 50 km/h the default urban speed limit. When they reduced Ponsonby Road to 40 km/h, they had to stick up all these signs because the surrounding areas suddenly ended up having a higher speed limit than the main street, even the dinky residential ones. Very weird, but I can kinda understand the logic. Finding agreement for a blanket 40 km/h rule all over Ponsonby would have been a lot harder. This way, we got 40 km/h on the main street, and the rest will eventually follow. Maybe even to 30 km/h. One can dream.
It allows the sides of the street to “talk” with each other, they are less windy, traffic moves slower, its easier to cross the road. In cities there are those trying to be at a place and those moving to another place. The space and privilege we grant to movement needs to be considered with its impact on the place its moving through. Auckland’s shared streets are a great recalibration of this balance.
A very interesting post, i would like to see this done to some of Auckland’s streets.
I was in Tokyo for a few weeks a while back. When I got back to suburban Auckland, I found myself thinking, “hey, you could put a whole row of townhouses down the middle of this road and noone would even notice!”. Seriously, you can u-turn a large family car in our street without even trying, it’s got to be 10m wide, not counting the pavements. What a waste of space.
Extraordinarily difficult to figure out how to get that space back again though – short of demolishing whole subdivisions and starting over, there’s not a lot we can do about it. And in residential 6A there are 6m setbacks from the property boundary, and limits of about 40% of the frontage that can be filled inside 3-6 metres from the boundary. So 10m street, 3m pavement (with green margin) either side, 6m setback on each side, that’s 28m between houses across the street from one another. How many of us use our front yards anyway?!
Maybe that row of townhouses down the middle of the street isn’t such a crazy idea after all…
Hi David O,
From a recent design contest for affordable housing in Vancouver.
http://www.rethinkhousing.ca/view_submission.php?ID=23
“The City has an enormous land resource in the form of underutilized streets. We propose dividing 66’ wide north/south street right-of-ways into equal parts, creating two new 33’ residential lots and a narrower 33’ street right-of-way. The new lots would be developed for afford¬able housing. A conservative estimate is that over 10,000 homes could be created, tapping into over $2 billion in land value.”
One thing that always strikes me about suburbia is how unless people’s front lawns are. They either get left bare, turned into carparks/garages or narrow gardens. All the family activity happens in the house or around the back.
I’m sure a lot of people would love to just move their house forward 3m and have a bigger back yard.
Mostly, front yards seem to be for the creation of ‘street appeal’ which is a fictitious product for adding value to your property when you sell it. After paying for street appeal, you don’t actually get any value out of it, just (I guess) a nice warm glow knowing that it’s yours to sell to the next sucker, uh, excuse me… person that comes along. Quite weird, really. Interesting link morecityplease!. And Simon, yes, I’m sure most people would like more backyard – although that wouldn’t help with the density issues.
Hi David – the easiest way is adding more cycleways and pedestrian space, and reevrse-recessing the parking (i.e. you keep the cars where they park now, but every 2-4 car parks, you add a kerb-build-out (of quite generous size) with a big tree, or a pedestrian crossing / traffic calming feature etc… – your street becomes a lot narrower visually, and more space is provided for green and other uses.
Good post, reminds me of James Howard Kunstler’s TED talk on defining space and his great line about standing on one side of a wide street and not seeing the buildings on the other because of the curvature of the earth…quality…
I live in London and narrow streets are the bane of the city. there are often snarl ups caused by most suburban side roads not being able to fit to cars side by side in either direction. When I visit NZ regularly, I love the pleasure of just driving down the road without having to pull into spare car parks every minute or two, to let the car in the other direction pass. My regular walk to the train station is at times made unpleasant from horns being tooted by cars queuing behind two cars facing opposite directions who refuse to bear to each other.
Isn’t rhe problem the cars just as much as it is the narrow streets? I mean, there was a time when the streets were built (and for some decades after) when the streets were perfectly adequate. I also wonder how much difference the ever-increasing width of cars has made. Even in Tokyo, on one occasion, I saw a Hummer – not a smart choice in that city! But without going to extremes, just for example (numbers grabbed online), the Ford Anglia was ~1450mm wide, but 50 years on the Ford Mondeo is ~1850mm wide. That makes a big difference when your looking at two lots of parked cars, and two cars trying to pass one another. Someone said elsewhere that “solving congestion by building more roads is like curing obesity by buying bigger pants” – same thing for wider streets.
Going to have to steel that last quote = awesome!!
When cycling you really are made aware of the extra width of SUVs… they literally hog the roadspace…. often occupied by one skinny person. They all seem to have oversized mirrors too, which I occasionally adjust for them….. heh.
And we have wide lanes in NZ, which I am not in favour of… another case of letting out the belt to deal with the greed.
Not just SUVs though. Here’s a nice photo of the difference between the old mini and the (not so) new one http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardmackney/3498773676/
That sound like a problem with parking more than anything Jeremy. Is there parking up both sides of the street then?
Jeremy’s right about the London problem, it is exacerbated by thousands of properties without offstreet parking, so residents’ parking is allocated and as a result there is only ever space for one vehicle to safely go down a residential street. Idealists might argue againset residents’ parking, but unless a draconian view is going to be taken about car ownership (and cars are the dominant mode for commuting in London for those commuting to outer London employment, not the Zone 1 central London which tourists see), then this will persist as the problem. Even worse with commercial vehicles for furniture delivery or rubbish collection. It also has a deleterious effect on cycling, because cyclists face swinging in and out from the kerb due to parked vehicles, and face vehicles coming the other way very close. Buses too face delays in having to wait for vehicles coming the other way.
Of course it’s far too expensive to fix, but it is hardly a model to be replicated. Of course in the West End numerous footpaths have been widened because the foot traffic exceeds the motorised traffic volumes, and Oxford Street now has two wide footpaths and narrow lanes (no parking) for the bus and taxi only traffic during the week.
The supposed lack of off-street parking is what led to minimum parking requirements, so be careful what you wish for.
Yes and no, we need to choose which streets we need to narrow. One of the great things about Melbourne was how wide the streets were built. This had the added benefit of being able to install a great Tram system later on. Wasn’t the intention at the time, but ended up being a great blessing.
I’m looking out of the window down Quay st, and I wonder what’s the need for a 6 lanes highway, empty all day apart from 1 rush hour per day. With a huge median barrier that could accommodate easily 2 tram lines. And on the sides at the moment there is some kind of deadly footpath and cycle lane full of lamp posts and roots. Acres of unused asphalt. I should probably start an asphalt company.
Gian – Quay Street IS a good example, and one of the key elements of the Waterfront Plan is returning much of thet car space to people. In fact, I suspect I will see the new plans for Quay Street tonight, when I get to hobnob with the mayor at and everyone else at the big launch event. Let’s hope the Quay Street plans are courageous enough to make a difference.
Max, if you get any good inside scoop photos, press release etc email them through to me (click contact us) and we’ll put it up as a post.
I’m going too Nick, I’ll take my phone (!)
Joshua, I think that you’ll find that most of Melbourne’s tram system was built by land speculating developers opening up new residential areas on the (then) periphery, i.e. urban sprawl (Cervero’s “The Transit Metropolis p320-321). Therefore the streets were built wide because of the trams, not some happy conincidence for later on.
Not quite so, the width of Melbourne arterials was first set by the layout of the Hoddle Grid downtown, well before the tram era.
Initially it was to be a regular even grid of one chain wide streets (about 20m) for economy, but Mr Hoddle himself wanted two chain wide streets (about 40m) so that two bullock carts could easily pass each other while other carts were unloading goods to buildings. The main issue being that the port was initially located at the foot of Elizabeth St and all the colony’s freight would pass through the CBD streets.
The compromise was a grid of 1 1/2 chain main streets (30m) alternating with 1/2 chain service lanes (10m). This one move furnished Melbourne with two defining characteristics, wide boulevards that were very well suited to trams (initially horse powered, then steam hauled cable, then electric), and narrow lanes well suited to humans.
The 1 1/2 chain width was maintained for several arterial routes leading out of the city, but also many of the innermost suburbs that were developed in concert with tram lines reverted to one chain roads (that today see trams crawling along behind traffic jostling with parked cars).
No article about narrow streets would be complete without an article from Nathan Lewis: http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2011/021311.html
This is what annoys me about Auckalnd transport widening the road at Te Atatu. It makes areas more characterless. Yes the road is a major arterial route and yes it is heavily congested and yes they are widening the footpaths but AT seem content in turning suburbs in to car suburbs.
For the project they are knocking over 10 shops so people in the neighbour have to drive to stores further away. Turning a family suburb in to a concrete wasteland by knocking down trees and pushing the road right up to peoples houses.
Are there other solutions than widening roads?
More efficient use of the existing road width. A sweet as bus corridor would help.
Those help transit, but don’t help the people scale / local residents. Not unless you build them very carefully, with extra greenspace as median divider etc… and ensure that they don’t create even more pedestrian severance because some designer feels that it’s unsafe having pedestrians crossing a bus corridor.
I was meaning to use the existing roadspace for a bus corridor, so instead of having four car lanes on Te Atatu you have two car and two bus (and perhaps some cyclelanes). No need to widen the road, you get a heap more capacity in the same width. It helps the people scale by not having as much traffic pushing through the neighbourhood, for sure.
Be careful of what you wish for. Have the look at the current controversy over the Wellington central streets of Manners and Willis. Narrow yes, but now a no-go area for pedestrians and cyclists due to steel barriers. Here bus corridor = motorway!
Having stood on the side of Symonds St this evening as a zillion horrible Diesel buses thundered past I’m inclined to agree. Anyone who thinks we can just have more buses instead of underground rail needs to have that experience. Then get their head checked.
Yes anyone who questions spending billions on rail needs to be re-educated. Quite right.
To question spending lots of money on any project is a good idea. Maybe there should be a bit more questioning about the proposed East – West link at Penrose, the RONS commonly known as the ‘holiday highway’ or even the motorway link from SH18 to SH1? To spend money without looking at alternatives would be foolish indeed.
Yes dear Swan we are well aware of those who think we can get by without ever building anything again, I think if you read my comment you’ll see that this is its very point: it’s about the costs to the city of NOT spending some money. And, although this is always just ignored by those who are obsessed with payment, those costs are high, too high, but are not expressed in in direct financial terms.
Swan, as has been mentioned many times before by the time the CRL is built it will have been the most analysed transport project ever. And fair enough given its cost.
This is why I have long been a fan of the single-lane road. Wide streets are horrible. They create a barren, ugly atmosphere.