This is a guest post from reader Richard
Hope you have all had a happy new year. This is my first post on this blog and I am excited to make a positive difference to this country.
Road and streetscape design is important for all of us. It is what makes the difference between a warm, comfortable environment and a cold, dull environment. So, how could we make our streets more “warm and comfortable” as well as being safe (more on this later).
One thing I have noticed is the planting of trees on the pavement. This generally improves the environment of the area, however, some trees make the area feel better than other trees. For example, warmer trees (yellower trees) make the area more welcoming. On the other hand, dark green trees (colder trees), make the surrounding area not as welcoming. This is even more obvious if the surrounding area is predominately grey. The pictures below gives you an idea of what I mean.
Before I sat my full license test, I had a lesson with a driving instructor. After that lesson, he told me that most drivers are only able to focus well on two hazards at a time. A hazard is anything that is moving and could have the potential to be in your intended path. So, what does this mean? Do we just ban driving? Of course not as driving is, and will always be a necessity for the foreseeable future where there are no or few alternative transport options. In order to improve safety for all users a variety of things could be improved.
Firstly, having pedestrian crossings on roundabouts is not a good idea. Moving it 20-30m away from the roundabout would make it much safer. As shown in the illustration below (sorry can’t draw well), a driver turning left (A), is most likely focusing on the two most immediate hazards (B and C). What this means is that many drivers would not see the car approaching behind it (D), and the pedestrian (E). As a result, the driver would not have seen the pedestrian until it has completed the turn and with the crossing right next to the roundabout, there is a high likelihood of an accident. Until there are more competent drivers and/or autonomous cars, roads could be designed so that drivers have fewer hazards to deal with.
Roundabouts aren’t that great for cyclists either. You either have to merge in with traffic, or go on the footpath. Riding on the left of the road on a roundabout is extremely dangerous for a vulnerable cyclist like me, especially if vehicles are going to turn into your path. For that reason, I never undertake a left turning vehicle or one that would cross into my lane. One way to fix this issue would be to install “lips” (not too sure of its official name) so that cyclists would be on the footpath and that they would cross the road as if they were a pedestrian. This would mean there would be less interaction with motor vehicles. Although having both pedestrians and cyclists on the footpath may sound like a bad idea, I believe that most suburban and residential roads won’t have enough pedestrians to cause issues for cyclists and vice versa. After they have gone through the roundabout, they would continue to ride on the road.
I do have other ideas to improve safety and to improve streetscapes, but I think that this is enough for one post.
Have you got any other sensible ways to improve the safety of cyclists and pedestrians and/or improving streetscapes? Discuss below
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Roundabouts can be great. Context is everything. Low traffic volumes and speeds (as per Dutch examples) are fine to keep bikes on road. Higher traffic volumes / speeds, cycle paths leading to crossings as per pedestrian crossings in your example. Dual lane roundabouts – these are entirely unsuitable for bikes and pedestrians.
As always, the Dutch are brilliant at this sort of thing. Here’s a regular old roundabout, with priority for pedestrians and cyclists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEXD0guLQY0
And this one takes it to the next level! (Sorry). https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/spectacular-new-floating-cycle-roundabout/
The first link is pretty cool. I am a bit surprised to see how well that works where there is low/medium traffic. Where there is more traffic, it may not work as well because there would be motor vehicles stopping inside the roundabout, which causes the roundsbout to operate in sub optimal conditions (that’s me pretending to be a traffic engineer haha)
The bicycle roundabout looks awesome though. However it’ll probably cost about $5million-$10million and it is unlikely won’t find its way into urban areas as it uses a lot of space.
Ok that is amazing that floating ring. Anything is possible if it is a priority
Kids down to 3 years old or less using it, mobility scooters etc. Who cares what the petroleum circus is up to and fitter and better for the environment. I guess for us right now physical separated cycling is the focus and build on that in a smart way. Cycling needs bus to be fully set free with priority, then the width will come fast. A full scale look at arterials, removing parking and flush medians will provide max width in each corridor. Then it is just a mass produced effective barrier/planter box. Then you can send your kids out for a cycle and get a massive leap in mode share. Copenhagen have 36% mode share don’t see why not here if we have similar safe infrastructure. For them it is investing in good non dependent on other countries resources just stronger legs.
Ok, the view from the floating roundabout would be nice, I could stand there for a while just watching.
Here in New Zealand we do the opposite, check out the Wairere Dr/Gordonton Rd/Crosby Rd roundabout in Hamilton, the cycle lanes pull off the road then go under the roundabout into a second inner roundabout for cyclists.
I don’t necessarily think an underpass is a bad solution if well-designed. Some major cycling experts from the Netherlands like David Hembrow think highly of them (mainly because they require less struggle for the cyclist (an underpass has some 3m of height difference, a bridge, 6m!).
The main issue is that we can’t – and shouldn’t have to – spend multi-megabucks to build bridges and underpasses everywhere just to keep pedestrians and cyclists safe when slow-speed and proper design can do the same. Fancy bridges are for crossing motorway interchanges and the like, not for local roads (or even arterials).
All comes down to number of lanes to cross, expected numbers of pedestrians/bikes, function of road, vehicle speeds and volumes.
The problem with pushing pedestrian crossings further away from an intersection, is that pedestrians do not want to go that far along a tangential sidestreet in order to cross it. They’re more likely to just jaywalk. I prefer the ‘no pedestrian crossing’ design, where there are islands in the middle of the road at the roundabout, so pedestrians have space to wait, but no crossing – so pedestrians give way to cars. Not sure what the safety data is for any of this though.
Roundabouts may be great for motorists but are not very good for pedestrians – a 20 metre offset on each leg of a roundabout would mount up to a considerable detour for those on feet – especially for more complex large roundabouts with 5 or 6 legs (e.g. Royal Oak).
[Duplicate comment sorry, I couldn’t see the others on first load for some reason. Point stands.]
Not sure that forcing pedestrians and cyclists who are travelling straight ahead to detour 40-60m will improve safety. I, for one, would simply ignore the crossing.
Also, I vastly prefer cycling through even a large roundabout over a controlled intersection (and I used to ride through the Panmure monstrosity twice a day). Most car drivers slow down for roundabouts, which gives cyclists a chance to merge and get into the correct lane – not always possible on a green traffic light.
Slowing down traffic near / on a roundabout much more than we do in NZ – and avoiding multi-lane roundabouts – is the key thing we can do to make roundabouts safer and more pleasant for pedestrians and cyclists. The Dutch do okay with their roundabouts. We, however, implement roundabouts too often as a capacity measure – when a road intersection gets too busy for standard give-way, but is not yet busy enough for traffic signals. If we implement them as a safety measure, then generally only because of car-car crash records (for which they work great, but at the expense of non-car users – sound familiar?).
Slowing down traffic on the other hand, has the dual benefit of giving drivers more time to identify those hazards – and if something happens, the crash is less severe.
Here’s an AT design for a new roundabout at the intersection of Calliope and Victoria Rd in Devonport that will improve the intersection for cars, cyclists and pedestrians. It is possible – it just needs the will to do it https://www.facebook.com/download/813173232073110/140613_Victoria%20%26%20Calliope%20Rd%20IntersectionDevonport.pdf
That design is really good as it caters for pedestrians, cyclists and cars. Being able to draw better than me is a huge bonus too!
But even with car – car crashes they are safer due to reduced speeds. The function shouldn’t necessarily focus on crashes, but perhaps more on injury prevention for ALL users.
“Moving it 20-30m away from the roundabout would make it much safer” – but no pedestrians will use it. The put an pedestrian crossing on Scotland St near the Victoria Park New World 20-30m away from College Hill. No one uses it.
There is much foot traffic walking straight ahead along College Hill – and they just keep walking straight ahead, instead of detouring to the pedestrian crossing. Surely turning traffic should just give way to straight through traffic, it shouldn’t matter if they are foot traffic or wheeled traffic.
A huge part of this debate is how driver’s bad behaviour/ low skills are endorsed by traffic engineering practices. Rather than improving education, the road code and enforcing better standards (e.g. through drivers test) we assume that all drivers are incompetent and fail to look for pedestrians/cyclists and hence roads must be designed to protect pedestrians and cyclists at all costs even if that means far more inconvenience for them. So we end up with:
– Zebras placed in locations which don’t match desire lines
– Cyclists forced to dismount because of roundabout design
– Jay walking made illegal (why?)
Safety is too often used as an excuse for bad designs. This is quite perverse as no one wants to seen to be against “safety” hence these car dominant designs continue to prevail.
A change in focus is needed.
“Jaywalking” as defined in much of the world does not exist as an offence in NZ. Only when you are within 20m of formal crossings are you required to use them. Thankfully, we didn’t accept that particular car industry measure that in other countries forces you to walk hundreds of meters (if there even is a crossing at all).
Yes – there’s no such thing as “jaywalking”, it’s actually “crossing the road”.
It’s also just the compromise between convenience for cars vs. convenience for pedestrians:
Consider the crossing of Shakespeare Road and Tarahoto Road at Smales Farm. Google Maps here: https://www.google.com/maps/@-36.782966,174.7529402,270m/data=!3m1!1e3
Suppose you’re a pedestrian, walking on the eastern side of Taharoto Road. First the positive: there are zebra crossings on the slip lanes. This ought to be the case on any intersection.
Now, suppose when you arrive at the traffic light, traffic going straight on Taharoto Road just got green light.
It is safe to cross. All right turning traffic has red light, and left turning traffic is on the slip lanes. So even if there is no benefit to cars, pedestrians still have to push the button and wait a full cycle to cross legally.
Then, after you wait a full cycle, there is a green light, but the light only stays green for a minimal amount of time before turning red again. Why doesn’t it stay green until the light for the cars is about to turn red? At least this seems to have improved during the last years.
If you follow Taharoto Road to the northeast, you come across the traffic lights at the school entrance. Here, on the western side, pedestrians always have red light, and cars turning left (coming from the south) have a green arrow. Very convenient for traffic coming from the south turning left. But most of the day there is no such traffic. There can be just a green light, and if you turn left you have to give way to the pedestrians. This can be dangerous though: left turning cars and especially trucks have a blind spot, so they may not be able to see pedestrians while turning.
In short, in a lot of places, avoiding even a tiny inconvenience for cars (or sometimes none at all), seems to warrant a major inconvenience to pedestrians.
In the first situation, I think best way to fix it up is that if you press the button when the green man is supposed to be on, you get what is left of the green phase. In Welly, most pedestrians would just go on the red and ignore the signals.
In the second case, I think a sensor should be placed on the left hand turn lane, with the red light being permanently on, unless there was a car, motorbike, scooter or bike that wanted to turn left, and is on the sensor.
And on the topic of trees I think we need to be far more selective in the species we use in our streets. I think it any tree is worth being planted it should at least be able to get to a size that it has an appreciable impact on the amenity of a street. Kowhai, Pittosporum and other medium sized trees don’t cut the mustard in my opinion. Also need to consider which are the most hardy trees so that once planted they will establish, rather than hanging on for dear life and adding little to the streetscape.
Agree.
Also the trees root structure needs to be taken into account. In our street the trees had a shallow root structure. The result is pushed up footpaths.
Able to get to a size… and then stay there.
If the tree gets large enough to be a hazard to overhead power lines, the council chops the middle out of them, resulting in strange Dr Seuss-like Y shaped trees. 15 years since they were planted, the Horseshoe Chestnuts in my street are just on the point of getting the Y cut.
I think it’s Vector who chops the middle out of them.
Vector does have a budget for under grounding a certain number of streets a year. Personally I think streets with big trees should be first ones done…
Petitioning the board can help?
People just need to drive more considerately; I have no answer how to make everyone drive like this though.
As everyone has learnt when they started out in a car, they need to look as far ahead as possible, identify the potential hazards and be prepared to adjust their driving accordingly. But from what I see, many people appear not to be able to judge any hazards beyond what is immediately in front of them e.g. those people who keep to the left lane of the motorway when others are trying to merge.
Saying “People just need to drive more considerately” is just wishful thinking. People should also just exercise more, just eat more healthily, and just not beat their wives. Our streets need to be designed to _force_ people drive more considerately or at least take into account that people will not drive considerately given the opportunity.
The roundabout at roskill South Cnr dominion and Richardson road is like the one you drew, and that is in the middle of a shopping area. Not sure what bright spark thought it was better than traffic lights. It doesn’t even work that well for cars during rush hour.
I can kind of understand royal oak because of it being 5 way which probably won’t work that well with traffic lights but I’m sure there is a better solution like somehow turning it into two intersections.
Roundabouts in shopping and pedestrian areas should be an absolute planning no no.
“Roundabouts in shopping and pedestrian areas should be an absolute planning no no.” Totally agree. Its not nice for vunerable cyclists as they are forced to use the footpath (I’ve been doing that for the past decade). More confident cyclists may be able to merge into traffic. Peds have to wait for a gap in the traffic (unless there were ped crossings on the roundabout). Overall, it’s not nice for peds and bikes, although some might find it fine I suppose. My ‘lips’ suggestion is just a cheap way to cater for vulnerable/less confident cyclists, rather than changing the roundabout into a traffic light.
Richard – I confess that I am a bit worried. It’s your first guest post here, and already you’re thinking like a traffic engineer. You’re designing roundabouts for cars, not for people. Let’s start from a different position.
Streets are for people, right? If you were a person, walking along the street, and you came to an intersection, with other people crossing but also cars crossing your path as well, then how would you want to interact with that? How would the design of the intersection cope with that? People are the most important part of the design. Cars are people also, except that they have large heavy metal boxes surrounding them, that can kill people. So treat them with caution, and don’t give them priority – give the people priority instead.
Ok – now, please, go and redesign your roundabout in view of the above. I look forward to seeing a revised version.
The easiest thing to do would be to add ped crossings on all four sides of the roundabout. For a three way roundabout, take a look a chriswerry’s drawing – it looks pretty good. Context is everything though, where there are few pedrestrains and bikes and high traffic flow, my design is okay. In places with more peds, bikes and less traffic, more pedestrian priority would be needed. My design is meant to reduce the incidence of car vs bike and car vs ped crashes, however, driving to the conditions (not lower speed limit), looking ahead for potential hazards all help too.
Hello Richard, great post please do more.
Here is report by AA UK on pedestrian crossing in Europe.
Where the Netherlands almost always scores the best result.
From page 10 refer “Position in the intersection or along the road section” I read this to say. Austria and Netherlands place crossings where people cross more than where some person wants people to cross.
The other thing to note is “In the Netherlands, the pedestrian is not specifically asked to pay attention before using a pedestrian crossing.”
http://www.theaa.com/public_affairs/reports/aa-pedestrian-crossings-survey-in-europe.pdf
“In the Netherlands, the pedestrian is not specifically asked to pay attention before using a pedestrian crossing.” That is very interesting and it is due to (I assume) the fact that sightlines for ped crossings are much, much better than many of the ped crossings in NZ. For example, you can park 1m after the ped crossing in NZ. This means that the sightline for drivers is significantly less, therefore peds have to look out for drivers that are too close to stop. This is due to the driver not having the ability to see the pedestrian in time. Overall, more could be done to reduce the incidence and the severity of car vs ped accidents.
Hello Richard
Looks like you can park with in a meter of ped crossing in Rotterdam.
http://goo.gl/maps/CQ0RG and http://goo.gl/maps/GZ77F
My thinking is Dutch people like clear and enforceable rules. Absolute know confusion on responsibility.
E.g. greater speed and force equals greater responsibility.
In that case, I think that NZ drivers do need to be a bit more considerate and careful around ped crossings. From what I have noticed, the only people who slow down to look for peds around the crossing, are learner drivers and those sitting the restricted/full tests. Everyone else drives around like they are playing GTA.
In the second pic, the ped crossing ‘cuts’ across the parks – the footpath sticks out. This improves sight lines for drivers. However, the ‘protrouding footpath’ is quite rare in some areas. Again, slowing down slightly before a ped crossing does help.
The Dutch roundabout layout relies on the sawtooth road marking to indicate cars must give way to cyclists. Is there any movement to this being introduced in NZ. Was irt included in the recent safety panel report?
It’s indeed tricky to spot pedestrian E while also looking out for cars B and C, especially on small roundabouts.
So: drivers should slow down before entering the intersection.
There’s no need to send pedestrians on a long detour, just because some drivers want to turn left without slowing down. A lot of countries have pedestrian crossings like in your drawing (but on all legs of course), but the drivers manage to drive through every day without killing pedestrians.
Is anyone aware of the road rules in the USA regarding pedestrians at un marked intersections? I was led to believe that the pedestrian has right of way at an uncontrolled road junction and wondered if that is correct?
Well designed roundabouts are the best and most economic solution to many difficult intersections.
I know of numerous examples where roundabouts have solved traffic flow problems.
Raumati Road / Rimu Road intersection, Kapiti Road / Ocean Road intersection, Willowbank Road / Main Road intersection near Takapu Road railway station and Granada North interchange + numerous others.
I wonder if we need to express a form of priority for road usage. eg that the pedestrian has right of way and that the cyclist must give the pedestrian priority and the motor vehicle must give the cyclist and pedestrian priority,